Something Takes A Part of Me
by GilraenDernhelm
Summary: A new Arya/Jaime AU in which my two darlings are alone in a boat and feelings happen. Inspired by 'to fight for a cause they've long ago forgotten' by Maple Fay. CONTINUED!
1. Chapter 1

A note on the AU

In this AU, Jaime does not flee the capital after attacking Ned, so the whole Riverlands/imprisonment/hand aspect of the story does not happen.

A note on Arya's age

Every effort has been made to make Arya's age clear in each segment of this story. Nevertheless, here is a list to clear up any ambiguities for readers sensitive to underage ships.

Segment 1: 15.

Segment 2:11 .

Segments 3 and 4: 12 or 13.

Segment 5: 15.

Segment 6: 15.

* * *

For King Joffrey's twentieth name day, a hundred knights had competed in a mêlée. It had lasted four days and nights, and had not even produced a winner; a dispute between the supporters of two hedge knights ending in a drunken riot in the tourney grounds and the deaths of fifty gold cloaks in the ending of it.

This year, there was less potential for the slaughter of human beings (if infinitely more for the drowning of them), for Joffrey had decided that the only celebration he could possibly accept was a great banquet and dance on one of the small, rocky islands that dotted Blackwater Bay.

Jaime found the idea preposterous, and said so. Nevertheless, the little shit was determined to have his own way, and Cersei equally determined to let him have it, and by mid-morning of the day in question, Jaime was smirking triumphantly as he silently patrolled the deck of Cersei's pleasure barge; listening to the Lady Sansa squeal and scream about her direwolf brooch that had fallen into the water; listening to Joffrey threaten to have the Lady Sansa gutted if she continued to squeal and scream about her direwolf brooch that had fallen into the water; and listening to Arya volunteer to dive overboard and search for the direwolf brooch that had fallen into the water, if it would only stop her sister from making such a fuss.

The livid look on Arya's face as Cersei refused to allow her to do any such thing was so endearingly hilarious that Jaime had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing. He smiled at the girl as she stomped angrily away, graceful as a bowlegged deer wearing a potato sack, but the fire in her eyes only burned higher at the sight, and she passed him by without a word; leaving him to roll his eyes and attempt to ignore the knot coiling suddenly and unpleasantly in his stomach as her footsteps faded to nothing.

The feast itself was unpleasant, if not uneventful, with Joffrey choosing to spend a good portion of it pointing a crossbow at the Lady Sansa and deliberating loudly as to whether he should send either her, or her corpse, to Ramsay Bolton as a birthday greeting. On the two hundred and fiftieth repetition of this suggestion, Jaime had lost his temper and had threatened to throw the little shit's crossbow into Blackwater Bay; a justified, if unwise threat that provoked a great deal of screaming and death-threats from Joffrey and a stony-faced lecture on the Kingsguard's vows from Cersei. The latter hadn't troubled Jaime much: he would claim an apology later, in the coin of warm skin and kisses. But then the dancing had begun, and Joffrey, under the chivalric guise of asking the resident wallflower to dance, had made Arya suffer through six different sets, half of which she did not know the steps to, and when the younger Stark daughter, in a desperate bid for liberty, had deliberately trodden on the king's toes, Joffrey had dealt her such a powerful blow to the face that she had been knocked unconscious.

The silence could be heard clear across Blackwater Bay as Arya crumpled mutely to the dust. Most of it was the manifestation of a deep but polite disapproval at the king's having struck a lady. A much smaller portion of it was shock at the idea of a sheltered, almost proudly-stupid boy, who had never been to war, being strong enough to knock another person unconscious; even if the person in question was a scrawny little girl with the body of a starved war orphan.

Jaime's own silence was restraint, and resistance of the urge thundering deep within him to stride to her side and help her.

_She wouldn't want it. And under the circumstances, she's probably better off unconscious._

And when the girl had finally come round, and had risen to her feet without so much as a groan passing her lips, and Joffrey had called her his 'queen of dance' and had drunk a toast in her honour, Jaime had not drunk with him; watching, waiting, for her to glance in his direction; to give some indication that she had expected him to help her.

She didn't look at him once.

After enough time had passed for the incident to fall from Joffrey's mind, Arya – mumbling that she felt ill – had asked to be taken back to the city. It had been Cersei's idea of a joke (and a punishment, no doubt, for Jaime's earlier insubordination) to declare that an entire ship could not be dispatched on account of one miniscule girl, and that Jaime should instead take her back in a rowboat. When Jaime had pointed out that two servants could easily be dispatched for the same purpose, Cersei had smiled sweetly at him and accused him of discourteousness to a woman in need. Jaime had mutinously removed his armour, dumped it at Cersei's feet, and stridden off with a word.

He didn't want to be alone with the girl. He couldn't be alone with her.

With characteristic subtlety, Arya did not even wait for the island to fade from sight before seizing hold of the second pair of oars and rowing with him. Jaime told her, in as courteous a tone as he could muster, that her illness made exercise both unnecessary and inadvisable. The girl had glared at him with steel in her grey eyes, before declaring 'You're not very smart, are you?' and he had lapsed into silence after that, feeling like an idiot.

* * *

One night; years ago, but only days after she'd finally been let out of the cell that she had occupied since Littlefinger had discovered her living under Father's nose at Harrenhal, Jaime had found Arya alone in the practice yard; using a stick to hit a straw man. Cersei often called her 'little animal,' and Jaime had not been able to quarrel with the truth of that assertion as he had stood silently observing her; watching the alien grace in the litheness of her scrawny form and the small signs of skill in the amateurish whacking and grunting and poking with which she seemed to tear the air in half. Her anger was almost tangible; hatred bleeding out of every strike she made, and he had found his lips curling into a smirk at the absurdity of it: this skinny little insect, Ned Stark's daughter, alone in a practice yard, practicing. For what, exactly? In all likelihood she'd be shipped off and married the moment she flowered, and there wasn't a man in Westeros who would take her without the promise that she would cease to be who she was.

Thoroughly confused by the turn his thoughts had taken, Jaime had scoffed reassuringly at himself in the dark, causing the little animal to turn rapidly around and look for the source of the noise.

Her glare could have melted steel.

'Fuck off!'

Jaime had stared at her for a moment; unsure of having heard correctly.

'Fuck _off_,' she had repeated; swiping at the empty air with her stick and clearing wishing it was his head, 'I'm practicing.'

'Practicing for what?' Jaime had chortled.

'For the day I kill you,' the girl had snarled.

Jaime had bitten on his teeth to stop himself from laughing, and had dropped into a low bow.

'Ser Knight,' he had said, and had walked away chuckling quietly to himself.

How very, very singular.

* * *

After that night, he regularly found himself searching for her, simply because anything she did was always bound to be more entertaining than the average mummer's farce. Most often, he would find her slumping mutinously amongst the other high born girls of two or three-and-ten that Myrcella had invited to tea; wilfully destroying every cushion or handkerchief that came her way and glaring at her embarrassedly-blushing sister while her needle stabbed hard at the material, as though it were really the straw man that she attacked every night in the practice yard.

Sometimes, Jaime would find her practising when he returned from night duty to the white sword tower. He reported it to no one – though he probably should have.

'Do you _never_ sleep?' he once asked her.

'_No_,' the little girl snapped; slashing at the straw man.

'Why not?' Jaime drawled.

'There's things in my head,' she said.

'That makes two of us,' Jaime replied.

And before he could wince, or smirk, or do so much as wonder why the fuck he had said such a thing, the little girl had stopped her exercises – if you could call them that – and had turned to face him; her large grey eyes glinting murderously in the moonlight.

'What have you got in _your _head that keeps you awake?' she snarled, 'my brother? My father?'

Jaime tried, again, to smirk at her, and found that he couldn't.

'Aerys burning people alive,' he told her; shrugging; '_that's_ what I've got in my head.'

His words made the little girl's face change.

He didn't stay long enough to observe how.

* * *

On the day of the riots that followed Princess Myrcella's departure to Dorne, Jaime went back for the little girl.

Everyone present had agreed that she wasn't important enough to be saved. They had her elder sister in custody, after all. Why risk more men trying to save a little brat that Robb Stark would probably be thrilled to be rid of in any case?

When Jaime strode off to the palace gates, Cersei screamed after him; telling him to stay where he was. Joffrey screamed after him too; threatening to have his head on a spike if he disobeyed him.

The only person who didn't try to stop him was Tyrion. The fact spoke volumes.

As he pushed and sawed his way through the rioting masses, Jaime asked himself what he was doing, and why. Seeking atonement, perhaps, for the little girl's brat of a brother? Hedging his own bets for the day that he dropped dead?

Or was it because she was a child, with things in her head that didn't belong there, and that he, an adult suffering from the same sickness, had formed some absurd protective instinct towards her that made him want to save her from more memory; more nightmare; more _things_?

In that moment, he didn't know or care. He was the Kingslayer. He didn't need a reason to do what he wanted.

He found Arya stripped down to her shift in a stable; her gown a torn shadow in the dirt. She stood motionless and staring at the corpse of a man with his intestines hanging out of his stomach. In her hand, she held a blood-stained iron railing. She was trembling.

When Jaime spoke her name, her head jerked violently in his direction; a flash of cold, wolf-like yellow illuminating her grey eyes.

Then she fainted.

It happened so quickly that Jaime did not even have time to lunge for her as she crashed abruptly and brutally to the floor, as though all the strength had left her body in a single, dejected wave of emptiness.

Jaime crouched beside her and gently turned her over onto her back as the sounds of rioting and looting and raping continued heavy and grotesque in his ears. A bruise was forming on her cheekbone (a gift, no doubt, from the corpse on the floor) and as Jaime softly framed her face with his fingers, checking that the bastard hadn't broken any of her bones, her childish features suddenly arrested him, and made him stare.

Even in unconsciousness, her face bore a look of angry wariness; of hostility; of war; as though the imagined wrongs committed against her family were real, and strapped to her back like bricks.

As for the unimagined wrongs, their legacy was everywhere; in the lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes; at her forehead; at her throat; as though all her grieving and all her hating had boiled up from inside her and tattooed her skin.

It was like seeing the inside of himself on the outside of her.

Jaime felt his hand move of its own accord and smooth her hair from her eyes. She shifted slightly, as though somebody had tickled her nose in her sleep, and he put one arm around her waist and the other beneath her knees; lifting her.

What happened next was a blur; a conflagration of hearing, and moving, and seeing, and realising, in hesitant and agonising steps that made his senses spin and his stomach wrench within him.

He lifted Arya from the ground. A scream of anger, running footsteps and a song of unkempt steel sounded in his ears. He turned instinctively towards the noise. And suddenly he was face-to-face with a man, dirty, wild-eyed and bare-chested; a man with a dagger protruding from his chest.

The dagger, Valyrian steel with a golden lion's head for a hilt, was Jaime's own. Arya, still clutched in his arms, was the one holding it; her arm strong, stretched out, and complete as it clutched the hilt; the blade buried deep in the man's flesh.

Jaime was dimly conscious of the absence, at his hip, of the dagger's weight, as he and Arya watched the man fall; blood pouring from the man's chest and stuttering from his mouth like half-uttered curses.

Arya's body was bony and light – too light, for a girl of three-and-ten – but her hand, still clutching the dagger, remained perfectly steady; even as her other arm trembled and wound slowly about Jaime's shoulders; clutching at his armour until her knuckles turned white. An unconscious action, apparently, because the moment the bastard died, she began to struggle and argue like a two-year-old.

'Put me down!' she demanded; kicking like a drowning man.

'You're not strong enough to walk,' Jaime told her; tightening his grip on her.

'Let me _go_!' Arya loudly insisted; her shout transforming into an undignified yelp as Jaime promptly let go of her and watched with no small satisfaction as she landed on her rump in the dirt.

She made no attempt to comment on his reaction, or even to get up; fearful, no doubt, that she would simply fall over again and prove him right, and for a while, the two of them simply remained where they were; Jaime glaring in annoyance at Arya; Arya staring, white-faced, at the corpse, with Jaime's dagger still clutched in her hand.

It occurred to him, at some point, that he ought to thank her for saving his life.

'Thank you,' Jaime grudgingly muttered.

Arya looked nonchalantly up at him from her place on the floor, and shrugged.

'_I'm_ going to kill you,' she declared, 'and no one else.'

* * *

When he heard her footsteps in the sept, he recognised them. The sound made him afraid.

For every one of the four years that he had known her, she would be in the practice yard at this hour, and nowhere else; stabbing amateurishly at her straw man. And yet tonight she was here – here where he was, standing vigil over his father's body; breathing in the old bastard's smell as he rotted away in the heat.

Jaime had stood there for five days and nights, only leaving Father's side when Tommen; his nephew, his son, had sprinted away during the funeral, unable to bear the stink. The sweetness in the boy's eyes had reminded him of Cersei; Cersei as she was before Robert, before Father, before the world. He had clung to the thought like a talisman ever since he had noticed it; letting it fill his thoughts and take him out of the heat, the smell, the days that he had left.

He had thought of it when Cersei had come to him last night – or was it the night before? – dressed as a servant girl; looking very beautiful and asking him to be her Hand. He had thought of it when he had refused her, and his twin had stalked away from him; calling herself a fool for loving him. He had thought of it for almost every moment since then. And yet he did not think of it now, with the girl before him. It trickled from his mind like the blood that maesters took to purge the afflicted of their illness.

Arya made no attempt to conceal her identity; standing before him in the breeches and the dirty shirt that she seemed to acquire daily no matter how many times Cersei had them confiscated. She was reed-thin and boyish, a birdlike child, and yet she was a woman, ready to be wedded and bedded to whichever bastard Cersei chose to ply her to. She was not plagued by the same crowd of suitors that had besieged her sister at five-and-ten, but then Sansa was the heir to Winterfell, and a beauty – a bore, but a beauty – and Arya, though possessing a certain fairness of face on the rare occasions that she took the trouble to wash it, had almost nothing to mark her out as a noblewoman, or even a woman, come to that; nothing barring her small, pathetic beginnings of breasts that probably wouldn't need restraining until she was five-and-forty.

'He stinks,' Arya commented; gazing down at Father as though remarking the weather.

'I'll mention it to the septons the moment they arrive,' Jaime replied; too exhausted and too hungry for Cersei to entertain the girl's bullshit; 'they haven't noticed _at all_.'

'He's _smiling_,' Arya disapprovingly continued.

'He's rotting,' Jaime corrected.

And he was.

The smell of death was getting worse. So was the heat. The air seemed to shimmer with it, like the drops of sweat beading on the skin of Jaime's face and the skin beneath his armour, as though a fever were burning him up from within.

He resisted the temptation to wipe his forehead and watched as the girl stepped closer to the corpse. She reached out for a moment, as though to touch Father's face, but her hand faltered at the last minute and came to rest on the edge of the open sarcophagus. He could see her sweat on the wood, on her face, in her dark hair; her eyes grey and strange as she beheld the Lord of Casterly Rock in death.

'It would have amused him,' Arya said, half to herself, 'forcing us all to breathe in his stench.'

'Even you?' Jaime snapped.

'Especially me,' Arya replied; still looking down at Father; absorbed enough by what she saw not to heed the jealousy in Jaime's voice, or the shame that marked his silence afterwards; the knowledge that he wanted her to turn her eyes on him and spit at him.

She looked suddenly and intently up at him, as though she had heard his thoughts. He watched her grey eyes sweep over his pale face, exhausted eyes and the fragile iron of his demeanour. He watched her see right through him.

Then her gaze intensified, and he realised, with a surge of anger and exasperation, that she wasn't hurt, or even irritated by him.

She was worried about him.

'Lannister, have you –'

'Arya,' Jaime snapped, 'if you tell me that I need to sleep, I swear I'll –'

'You need to sleep,' she cheerfully told him.

'Are you unfamiliar with the concept of a vigil, little girl?' Jaime seethed.

'Whose idea was this?' Arya demanded; ignoring him.

'It was my idea,' Jaime replied, and Arya laughed out loud; her chuckling echoing through the sept like obscene shouts of joy.

'It was _Cersei's_ idea, wasn't it?' the girl demanded.

'You watch your fucking mouth when you speak of her,' Jaime growled, and he meant it.

Arya responded by rolling her eyes at him. The motion seemed to crown her slender form in candlelight; making light dance in her hair, and arms, and knees.

The heat was making his hair stick to his forehead. He could feel each individual bead of sweat forming, and breaking, and pulsing across the heat of his skull.

The ground was beginning to sway beneath his feet. He blinked, hard, and it steadied.

'How am I supposed to kill you if you die from exhaustion?' Arya was demanding; dramatically throwing up her hands.

'Careful,' Jaime smirked at her; 'you might make me think that you care.'

Arya's face fell. So did the candlelight; dropping to her feet, and then beneath them, and then up to her face again. She looked flushed, and hurt.

_Good._

'I promise you, I don't,' she snarled.

That satisfied him immensely. It even made his spinning head seem worth it.

'If you _are _here to kill me,' Jaime drawled, 'try not to get any blood on Father. He smells bad enough already.'

Arya's face erupted suddenly into a whirlpool of candlelight and darkness; the heat was crashing over him and filling his mouth like a deadly, boiling wave of exhaustion and anger and grief, and he was swaying before he could stop himself; his knees giving way beneath him; his arms clutching at the edge of the sarcophagus for support; and faster than he would have believed possible, she was there; her body pressing against his to keep him on his feet; her hands, callused and surprisingly strong, clutching at his fingers and pulling the weight of his body upwards; so that he wouldn't collapse in front of his father; so that he would stay upright.

The shock of her skin meeting his was like being struck in the stomach with a fist made of burning ice. It pulled him from the wave, and gave him air. He could feel the heat of her body radiating through her clothing, through his armour, through his skin, and on her face he could see her feeling it too.

It made her look as frightened as he felt.

She tried to pull her hands away. He locked his fingers with hers, and stopped her. Her eyes flickered upwards to his, and they were burning burning burning, with anger, with fear, with anger, and when she tried again to step back, he let her; remembering the last time they had been so close together; three years ago, when the news of the Red Wedding had reached King's Landing, and he had found her destroying her chambers with a chair; the glass of the mirror, the glass of the window, like a shimmering blanket on the floor, waiting, praying for blood.

She had screamed at him – for her family, for her father, for her brother – and he had let her. He had tried to touch her shoulder. She had hit him. He had let her. And afterwards, she had sat brooding in the window seat with no tears falling, her eyes flickering, every now and then, to where he sat on the floor, observing him; but not asking him to leave.

Eventually, she had come to sit next to him. He had put his hand on her shoulder. She had let him. He had put his arm around her shoulder. She had let him. Then, she had cried, and he had let her; holding her close until her tears dried up.

He told her about Aerys that night. Somehow, it had seemed like the right thing to say. She had sat silent as a wraith as he spoke; the grey in her eyes seeming to come alive with threads of molten silver.

'You're…not such a bastard, really,' she had said when he had finished, 'even if you are the stupidest person in the world.'

And they had sat there for a long while, the pair of them. The adult and the child with things in their heads; brought together by the act of stepping back.

She was stepping rapidly back from him now; pulling out of his touch; her cheeks and eyes aflame, and angry, and afraid, as though something was different – and it was – but it didn't matter; it _shouldn't_ matter. And as she backed further away, the painful shock of ice and fire that her skin had awakened in him began to fade, and he was weakening again without it; disappearing once more into the wave of heat; and he tried; he forced himself; he butchered himself; not to show it; not to show her that he wanted to breathe; to hold her close and feel her burn against him.

'You can't go a week without sleep,' Arya said.

'I must,' Jaime replied.

'Says who?' she demanded.

He didn't reply.

'Is that how it works?' Arya spat, 'she speaks, and you obey?'

'Fuck off, little girl,' Jaime said, 'you're making my head ache.'

She stared at him for a moment more, her eyes angry and afraid. Then she stepped down from the dais and left him, and he could feel the heat of the night coming over him once again; the dizziness; the nausea; the hunger. He wanted to run after Arya and kill her. He wanted her dead before he saw her again. Because burning skin, violent eyes, agony in separation, clarity in passion – he knew what that meant, and he didn't want any part of it. She was just a child, after all. Just a girl with things in her head.

He left the sept. He stormed to Cersei's rooms and fucked her till she screamed, and for every moment of it, he did not think once of his twin.

The shame came afterwards. Then the hatred. Then the wish that he had never gone back for her. That he had let the mob have her. That he had let her die.

He avoided her after that.

She noticed. She said nothing.

* * *

Jaime had only just started to remove his doublet in worry when the surface of the water was broken with barely a splash, and Arya appeared at the side; treading water and dropping the sparkling bloody brooch into the boat.

'Found it!' she proudly announced; ignoring his proffered hand and hauling herself back into the boat.

She collapsed unceremoniously into her place opposite him and made absolutely no attempt to put her dress on again; wringing waterfalls out of her dark hair as she watched him avoid her eyes. Seawater cascaded between her fingers and over her white shoulders to pool on the floor and trickle across her already-sodden shift; turning it the colour and texture of her skin that rippled with goosebumps in the wind; her nipples growing hard and erect as Jaime's cock was growing at the sight of her, and he determined to concentrate on rowing and on nothing else, _forwards, backwards, forwards, backwards_, and she was blowing a vagrant strand of hair out of her face and leaning backwards in a manner so utterly unconscious of the discomfort she was causing that Jaime felt rather tempted to take hold of her dress and plonk it on top of her head if she would only stop whatever in seven hells she was doing to him, _forwards, backwards, forwards, backwards_. Arya stretched out a hand and touched the surface of the water with her fingertips; her arm a lovely line of muscle and bone that stretched out from the boat to the sea. He wanted to break her arm and make her scream. He wanted to make her stop.

'Put your dress back on,' Jaime growled; rather more viciously than he had intended, because the look that she shot him in return was positively venomous.

The silence between them was like glass, to be shattered with a look, or a word. Fury raged in her grey eyes, and was slowly and silently overcome by hurt and resentment as she stared at him; a proud, glorious, half-naked woman; a child with things in her head.

'Why don't you talk to me anymore?' Arya softly asked.

Rage hit him like a firestorm. Didn't she have eyes? _Couldn't she see?_

Her eyes were locking with his in a challenge that he could not ignore; anger was boiling in the pit of his stomach and desire in every pore of his skin; and in his mind it only took an instant before he was across the space between them and on top of her; his tongue thrusting into her mouth and his hands grasping at her shoulders, her arms, her waist. In his mind, she didn't even try to stop him; her mouth soft and yielding and savage, lips and teeth both; seeking out his tongue and sucking on it while her hands clasped the back of his neck and the heat crushed his body to hers and sent yearning ripping through him as he pulled away from her gnashing lips and bit her neck; the sound of her moaning like a kind of surrender. In his mind, he moved lower; his tongue grazing her collarbone while she writhed and sighed and yanked her hips upwards to meet his. In his mind, he was biting her nipples until they hurt and sucking them until they throbbed. In his mind, he was tearing her shift and licking her cunt; nipping at her nub with his teeth and slipping a finger inside her, then two, then three and fucking her hard with his fingers until she screamed blue murder.

In his mind, he was moving slowly inside her and kissing her softly; kissing her wrists, her ankles, her eyelids, her nose, and making love to her so beautifully that she would finally understand that he loved her. That he always had.

In reality, he only saw her youth in greater clarity: how she was just a child, in spite of what she had seen. A child with things in her head.

'Put your dress back on,' Jaime repeated, not unkindly; leaning forward to hand it to her.

Arya lunged rapidly forward to snatch it before he could. Their foreheads almost banged together in the attempt. Jaime growled in annoyance and slammed the oars down in frustration; passing a weary hand over his eyes and seriously debating whether or not he should simply throw the girl overboard and be done with it. Instead, he lowered his hand, and found her dripping wet and beautiful and looking at him – really looking at him – and her eyes were like a thousand worlds as she leaned forward, touched his face and kissed him.

Everything disappeared but for her; but for her lips that nudged tentatively at his, softer than a whisper; but for the whimper that growled up from her throat as he coaxed her mouth open with his tongue; but for her hands that stroked his cheeks and ran into his hair as he kissed her, slowly and deliberately; but for her tiny, intoxicating mouth that whispered his name as he trailed his mouth along her jaw; making her arch her neck beneath him and sigh as his lips stroked her skin.

An instinct took hold of him, then. A knowledge. A certainty. If he allowed this to continue, she would be his forever. She would never leave him, and he would never leave her. He could taste it on her mouth; he could feel it in his arms encircling her waist; he could hear it in the memory of the months and months of deafening silence that had followed their meeting in the sept, and what he had felt there; what he knew _she_ had felt there, with him.

She was just a child. A child with things in her head. He had no right to…this…thing between them…if they allowed it…if he allowed it…if they went together to that place… choice would be a forgotten thing; a meaningless thing. He could not take choice from her when she was too young to know what it meant. She was just a child. A child with things in her head.

Arya's fingers were burning up the back of his neck, and her shocked, gasping kisses growing more desperate as she felt his cock grow harder against her. Jaime kissed her one more time, softly; branding the shape of her lips into his mind; resisting the urge to plunge his tongue into her mouth once more and tear the bodice of her shift.

Jaime pulled back from her, and held her gently at arm's length until she understood.

She stared at him.

He did his best to ignore the naked hurt and fire in her grey eyes as he once again took up the oars; his heart dancing and throbbing painfully; as though she were still in his arms.

'Please put your dress back on, Arya,' Jaime said; 'it's cold out.'


	2. Chapter 2

Author note (please read!)

I have been absolutely overwhelmed by the amount of support, and the number of good reviews and requests for more that have followed _Something Takes a Part of Me_. I have therefore decided to continue it as a multi-chapter fic. Please remember that this story was originally conceived as a one-shot, so I have absolutely no idea where I'm going in terms of an actual plot, and will literally be making it up as I go along! Yay! Yaiks! Anyway, I hope that you enjoy, and thanks once again for being awesome!

The story picks up a few months after where we left off, but the chapter, which takes the form of letters between Jaime and Arya, makes considerable use of strikethrough for dramatic effect. However, ff doesn't seem to support strikethrough, so I must ask readers, just for this chapter, to check the story out at AO3: archiveofourown dot org /works/1758043/chapters/3831889

I'm posting the chapter below, without strikethrough (mostly so I don't get banned for spamming) but it doesn't make a tremendous amount of sense without it. Please check out the chapter on AO3. It's just this once.

* * *

**Ser Jaime Lannister, at King's Landing, to the Lady Arya Stark, at the Dreadfort.**

Arya

Please don't tear this up without reading it.

Though I don't even know if they'll allow you to receive letters, so I don't suppose it bloody matters.

Well? Is returning to the North after all this time everything that you would have expected? Is the cold in your blood, or in your bones after being away for so long? Not that I know anything of the matter myself, but I would imagine that the fucking Dreadfort is a lot less comfortable than Winterfell, and Winterfell was uncomfortable enough to begin with, and after all these years in the South, I can't help but wonder if you're freezing your skinny little arse off I wouldn't be surprised if you're having difficulty acclimatising, Stark child or not.

Or perhaps I'm wrong. Is your lord husband showing you how to keep warm? As a true son of the North, Ramsay ought to be an expert at it by now, and I've heard that he has no shortage of enthusiasm for heat of any kind: the heat of blood, the heat of screams, the heat of flayed flesh, that sort of thing. But I won't enquire further, not after your assuring me every day for the past four years that you can take care of yourself. Until

The real reason I'm writing is to make sure that that sadistic little shit Ramsay hasn't hurt you

to apologise for

to tell you

to tell you that Cersei had a letter from Lady Sansa the other day, saying that life in Dorne agrees with her and that Lord Edric is fond of taking her riding I'm not sure if there are any horses involved and of presenting her with infinitesimal quantities of puppies on a regular basis. Cersei thinks she's lying, and I must say that I agree with her. Puppies? Really? Personally, I don't give a fuck, but Cersei takes an interest Could you shed any light on the matter? Cersei would write herself, but she's so busy trying out her petty intrigues on Margaery Tyrell that she doesn't even have time for no longer has time for private letter writing. I've told her to engage a secretary. She told me she'd heed my advice on such matters the day I accept to be her Hand. Really, can you_ imagine_ such a thing? I might even accept for a day, then engage a secretary to take notes of every idiocy I commit and have them sent to you. That should cheer you up, though I don't even know if you need cheering up trapped up there with your vicious bastard.

Please let me know how you get on. I'm _dying _of curiosity.

Yours faithfully

Ser Jaime Lannister

Lord Commander of the Kingsguard

* * *

**Ser Jaime Lannister, at King's Landing, to the Lady Arya Stark, at the Dreadfort.**

Arya

Don't you have a steward, or a septa, or some intellectual mediocrity charged with reminding you to reply to your letters? Or is there a shortage of ravens in the North since Greyjoy's joke of a victory at Winterfell? Has something happened to you? I can

What should I write to you about, so that Tyrion won't plague me about wasting his parchment?

I could always tell you about Joffrey. A fascinating topic of conversation, wouldn't you agree? He has discovered a new game. It involves shooting crossbow bolts at the heads mounted on the dry moat. I stand roasting in my armour for hours, watching him shoot the same targets again and again and listening to good Queen Margaery applaud him constantly. When she joins him at play, it's the most revolting spectacle that could be imagined: her standing there in full court dress, pretending each time that she doesn't know how to use the fucking crossbow so that Joff can put his arms around her, and she can whisper in his ear and giggle as he kisses her neck. I'd throw up in my helmet just to make a point if it didn't involve getting my hair dirty. , if the logistical complexity of such an action weren't more trouble than it's worth. I wish I could say I was glad you weren't here to see it, but then I'd be lying.

Send me a fucking letter, so that I may at least be sure someone hasn't flayed the skin off your body.

Ser Jaime Lannister

Lord Commander of the Kingsguard

* * *

**Ser Jaime Lannister, at King's Landing, to the Lady Arya Stark, at the Dreadfort.**

Arya

Cersei is bothering me day and night about how Sansa is getting on in Dorne. I have tried to obtain the information independently in several different ways. Lord Varys has nothing for me except 'the Lady Sansa is well. Lord Edric is enchanted with her, and beds her regularly.' _Really?_ That could mean anything. I'll wager Ramsay is enchanted with you and beds _you_ regularly, and that could _also_ mean anything.

In my hopeless desperation for information, I even went so far as to send a raven to Prince Doran Martell, and ended up receiving a reply from his brother, Prince Oberyn (the one who's famous for fucking half of Westeros). In any case, the 'reply' constituted nothing but two rolls of parchment's worth of absurd regrets that Lady Sansa and her husband would not yield to Prince Oberyn's repeated entreaties that they join him and his bastard paramour in bed. What use is such information to me? And imagine what would happen were your sister to fall prey to such depravity? It would be all your fault.

Look to your silence, little lady.

Jaime

* * *

**Ser Jaime Lannister, at King's Landing, to the Lady Arya Stark, at the Dreadfort.**

Arya

My congratulations on your good-father's victory over Stannis Baratheon. I don't suppose you know that Lord Roose and I met once, many years ago? I didn't much care for him. He wouldn't drink any wine. I

As to this latest victory, the rumour about court is that all the survivors were flayed alive, whether they'd surrendered or not. Personally, I do not believe it. That's a tremendous amount of corpses to leave for the crows, and besides, can you imagine the stink? Though I don't suppose you'd have to, being a Bolton yourself. Is it cold enough up North for the corpses to freeze? Or do they simply rot, like all other dead men?

Anyway, I just thought I'd remind you, in case you'd forgotten, that today is the anniversary of the Red Wedding. You are in my thoughts. I'm sorry. Tonight in the capital, there is to be a great feast, and Joffrey has engaged a troop of actors from the Free Cities to perform a re-enactment for the court. What I'm the most curious about is how they plan to chop off your brother's head and replace it with his direwolf's without injuring anyone. Tyrion plans on being drunk by the time they get to that part. Perhaps I'll join him. I'm glad you're not here to

How are you marking the occasion up North? In similar fashion, or is your good-father simply planning on massacring each person that attends the celebration?

Do tell

Jaime

* * *

**Ser Jaime Lannister, at King's Landing, to the Lady Arya Stark, at the Dreadfort.**

Arya

I'm sorry. I would never

I did not mean

I know

My previous letter was in very poor taste, and I apologise.

I'll never forget

I remember what you looked like, the day the news reached King's Landing. A child who had lost everything. You were like a ghost. A vengeful and angry ghost with the ability to destroy furniture, but still a ghost.

Are you alive? Can you speak? Can you walk? Can you fight? Can you at least fight?

Are you allowed weapons? Are you allowed life? Are you allowed

Just w

Fuck it

Jaime

* * *

**The Lady Arya Stark, at the Dreadfort, to Ser Jaime Lannister, at King's Landing (unsent).**

Jaime

Leave me alone.


	3. Chapter 3

The North stretched for hundreds of miles in all directions like a sleeping frost giant, and though Jaime wore the winter uniform of the Kingsguard, he could feel the cold mercilessly clawing its way through his flesh, and bones, and blood; as though it had grown fingers of Valyrian steel.

It was five years since Arya Stark had left the capital to marry Ramsay Bolton, the Bastard-No-Longer of the Dreadfort; five years since their marriage had brought the North back into the fold; and five years since Jaime had begun to write letters; knowing all the while that she would never write back. But now, with winter coming, King Joffrey wished (or had been manipulated by Queen Margaery into wishing) to visit every province of the Seven Kingdoms before the skies darkened; to see first-hand what progress his lords had made in putting life back together since the war.

The North had been last on Joffrey's list; partly because he would have to cross the other six kingdoms to reach it; mostly because the king, despite his love of tormenting Arya at every opportunity, had always nursed a secret terror of the girl stemming from the day that Nymeria had almost ripped his arm off.

Arya had told Jaime about it in the practice yard, one evening when she had still been a child.

_When I could still speak to her without wanting her. _

'I wish Nymeria _had_ ripped his arm off,' she had spat; her grey eyes glowing in the moonlight.

'If she had, then you'd be dead as your sister's wolf, little girl,' Jaime had replied.

She had scowled childishly at him, and had wordlessly gone back to attacking the straw man with her stick; the outlines of her bones peering through her sweat-sodden clothing like shy children. Then the night sky swirled abruptly into day, and the smell of her sweat became the smell of the sea, and she was opposite him in the boat, a child no longer; glaring at him as he glared at her; her small hands reaching forward to snatch her dress from the bottom of the boat; her small hands touching his face and curling in his hair as she kissed him; as he kissed her; as deeply as a man starved of air who had only just realised that he couldn't breathe.

The memory made Jaime feel almost as frightened of her as Joffrey was: gripping him with a sinking, gnawing, consuming fear that somehow failed to drive out the memory of what she had once looked like, felt like, tasted like, and to only make it seem more real.

'You're dreaming, brother,' a familiar voice observed, and Jaime started as Cersei, clad in a magnificent fur coat, pulled her horse in alongside his.

Her _horse_?

'Are you _riding_, sweet sister?' Jaime asked; delighted at the prospect of a respite from his thoughts, 'should I send for a maester to be sure you're alright?'

'Don't be tiresome, or you'll make me sorry I came at all,' Cersei breezily replied.

'Since when do you ride anywhere?'

'Since my wheelhouse decided to sink itself into a sea of mud and Joffrey would not call a halt to see to it.'

'How disobliging of him. Why haven't you taken him over your knee?'

Cersei tossed her beautiful head in annoyance, glared at him with something like disappointment, and promptly gathered the reins in her gloved hands.

'You will excuse me while I find somebody less wearisome to converse with?' she icily proposed.

_Cersei, don't go_, Jaime thought.

'I love you too, sweet sister,' Jaime smirked.

She galloped away from him without replying; leaving him completely alone with the powerful, nauseating sense of unease at where they were, and why, and he glanced hopefully up and down the line for Tyrion, and hopefully, laughter, and wine.

But his brother was nowhere to be seen, and the past was fucking everywhere – inside him; around him – and he remembered the day that Arya had left King's Landing; dragged from her chambers and chained up in the carriage that would take her North; screaming obscenities and fighting so hard that it had taken three men to hold her down.

Jaime had stood, and watched, and done nothing; his fingers clutching so tightly about the hilt of his sword that they had ached for hours afterwards.

_If I try to stop it, they'll know._

_If I try to stop it, she'll know._

_And even if I _do_ stop it, who will I propose in Ramsay's place? Myself?_

_I'm Kingsguard._

_I'm the Kingslayer._

_I'm Cersei._

_I'm the South._

And as he remembered the sound of her screaming, and the clanking of her chains as she struggled against them, the first towers of the Dreadfort appeared out of the fog, perching like hideous stone dragons making their nests on the hills. And the dread was swelling like a black tide in his stomach, and he was closing his eyes and pushing it away and calling up visions of Cersei; his twin, his other half; her limbs entwined with his as they lay together; her ivory nakedness flushing as he held her hard against him.

His cock stirred in his breeches. The dread remained where it was; lodged in his stomach like a stone, and spreading to the rest of his body like poison; and as they drew nearer to the Dreadfort; to those bleak, freezing, monstrous mountains of stone that seemed to blanket all the world in boiling, screaming silence; he found himself wishing that they had sent the child to hell rather than to this place. At least in hell, there was fire. At least in hell you could scream, and know that someone could hear you.

Jaime galloped to the front of the line and took up his place behind Joffrey, Margaery and Cersei, even as the royal party clattered and trudged and complained its way through the groaning wooden gates of the Dreadfort; even as Prince Tywin and Princess Roslyn continued to chatter animatedly to each other despite the noxious atmosphere, and scowled deeply as their septa bade them hold their tongues and sit up straight.

A crowd of oddly-shaped and oddly-complected peasants was assembled in the crumbling, muddy and woefully-provincial forecourt, presided over by Roose I-don't-partake Bolton himself, and the largest woman that Jaime had ever seen.

Lord Roose went to his knees. His household and his large lady followed suit. Joffrey smirked at them, and did not bid them rise, and Lord Roose bade him welcome in a deep, carrying voice that showed a steely, Northern indifference to the spoiling of his best breeches.

'You are welcome to the Dreadfort, Your Graces,' Lord Roose declared, 'our House is honoured by your presence. We hope you found the roads passable.'

'Fucking _awful_, since you're asking,' Joffrey replied, fussily removing his gloves and still not telling them to rise, 'it's been _so_ many years since this place was made civilised, and yet you people still haven't found a way to build a decent –'

'Now, now, my love, you exaggerate,' Margaery interrupted, offering her hand to Lord Roose and motioning to the household to stand, 'you have a beautiful country, my lord. Pay no attention to my royal husband's barbaric suggestion that you spoil it with roads.'

'Thank you, Your Grace,' Lord Roose replied, bowing stiffly and making no further remark upon the queen's handsome speech, 'if you will permit me to present my wife, the Lady Walda –'

The enormous lady curtseyed, and tittered.

'– and my grandson, the Lord Lucion Bolton of Winterfell.'

Joffrey, Margaery and Cersei stared blankly downwards at the empty space indicated by Lord Roose, and when the man's unfortunate grandson – four years old, five at most – was thrust into the light from his hiding place behind Lady Walda's conveniently-large girth, his face bore an expression suggesting a fervent desire to murder every person within ten feet of him.

'What a pretty little man you are,' Margaery swooned, 'before long you'll be breaking hearts.'

'Do you have crossbows in the North?' Joffrey indifferently enquired.

'Where's the Imp?' Lucion asked, and was promptly clouted over the head by his grandfather and told to hold his tongue.

Jaime stared at Lucion as Lord Roose continued the traditional formalities, and Lucion, sensing his gaze, stared furiously back at Jaime as though he rather wanted to put a maggot hole in his belly. But when the boy's eyes fell on Jaime's sword, and on the colour of his armour, his entire face lit up with all the idiocy of a young boy drunk on imagined glory and killing without fall of blood.

He had a mop of curly black hair, and alabaster skin that flushed red in the cold.

He had large grey eyes, so wild that at times they seemed almost silver.

His annoyance at not having his question answered seemed to boil out of him like lava, despite his age.

He was a Stark down to his fingertips.

He was her son.

'I regret that my son and good-daughter are not here to greet you,' Lord Roose was droning on, 'they went hunting two days ago, and have been gone long enough for me to fear that some misfortune might have befallen them. I have sent out a search party, but we have yet to –'

A sudden, chaotic, overly-raucous thundering of hooves from the gate split Lord Roose's words in half, like a morning star through a watermelon. The Lord of the Dreadfort coloured in both embarrassment and anger; Lady Walda blushed an unbecoming shade of scarlet; and as Jaime turned in his saddle to observe the cause of the commotion, Arya and Ramsay Bolton galloped into the yard; the latter with a wild, manic grin on his face; the former with a face like stone, and the bleeding corpse of a little boy tied to her saddle.

Jaime swallowed in horror as the horses came to a halt and the corpse proved itself to be a living thing; mewling pitifully and struggling against the ropes that bound it. Arya, without so much as a glance in the child's direction, sent her dagger slicing through the ropes, so that the little boy plummeted downwards into the mud and twitched weakly, as though he were already dead.

Ramsay gave a hoarse, obscene giggle and grinned gleefully at his wife, who sheathed her dagger and smiled wryly at him in return, and as Jaime stared at the pair of them, with their matching leathers, preposterous, milky Northern complexions and cruel smiles, he felt bile rising rapidly and horribly in his throat; poisonous as unspoken words.

_No._

He could see that she knew he was there. He saw it in the way that she refused to look at him; in the way that her eyes, sweeping over the company, consigned an empty space to the place that he was.

He didn't recognise her. He couldn't see her…not in her eyes that were dead and empty; not in her silent, voiceless, expressionless face; not in her hair that hung wild and tangled to her waist, more black now than brown, as though it had lost its warmth. Any outside part of her that might still have been an inside part of him was gone, disappeared, suffocated; overwhelmed and trodden underfoot by the five years that she had been here, survived here, not died here; by the little boy lying prostrate in the mud; by her son who was watching her with guileless confusion in his eyes; by the husband at her side that was known from Dorne to the Wall for his cruelties, into whose hands Jaime had practically delivered her.

By doing nothing. By saying nothing. By acting like a fucking honourable man, even when the choice that he had so badly wanted her to have had been snatched away from her.

The things in her head had won. And he had helped them do it.

'I can't _stand_ the wailing of small children,' Joffrey was drawling; his nose wrinkling in disdain at the sight of the prostrate child, 'if he's done something wrong, then why haven't you killed him?'

'My dear little wife was in a merciful mood,' Ramsay replied, with horrible enthusiasm, 'we were all set to put a spear in his back when she pulls up and says 'My love, I'm bored with chasing children. Why can't we wait till he has longer legs?'

Joffrey, untroubled both by the anecdote and by Ramsay's impertinence in speaking to him without an introduction, stared for a moment at the Bastard-No-Longer of the Dreadfort, before bursting out into a delighted cacophony of shrill guffaws, as though the joke were the best he had ever heard.

Ramsay, encouraged, enthusiastically joined the king in expressing his mirth, and laughed until he was bent almost double in the saddle; his howls mingling obscenely with Joffrey's and ringing up to the Northern sky like prayers for blood and death, until the pair of them sounded less like two men laughing, and more like a pack of delighted crows descending on a battlefield after a massacre.

Arya sat perfectly upright in her saddle and said nothing as Ramsay and Joffrey continued to shriek delightedly together; her violent grey eyes flickering from Joffrey to Cersei and slowly turned the colour of pitch, and when Ramsay finally stopped laughing, wiped his eyes, and took her hand and kissed it, she wound her fingers through his and obstinately remained silent; as though speaking at all would honour the company in a way she did not wish to.

_Why is she taking his fucking hand? _Jaime silently demanded.

_He is her husband, _a voice in his head replied.

And still Jaime stared at her, willing her to look at him, and show him…that she wasn't _this_; that she hadn't become this…

If he heard her voice, he'd know. He'd know no matter what she did or said.

But still she did not look at him, and still she did not say a word, though propriety and her status as the future Lady of the Dreadfort dictated that she should. Cersei's lip curled into an expression of spectacular disdain, Arya's silence grew ever more pronounced, and Lord Roose made a commendable effort to remedy the situation by commanding Arya and Ramsay to dismount, and be formally introduced to the King, the Queen and the Queen Dowager.

'Your Graces,' Lord Roose began as Ramsay dismounted, 'may I present my son, the Lord Ramsay Bolton of Winterfell, and his wife the Lady Arya.'

Ramsay bent into a flamboyant bow that would not have looked out of place at a mummer's farce.

Arya, who had remained in the saddle, performed no reverence and showed no acknowledgment of any kind. She cast a sweeping, contemptuous glare over Joffrey and Cersei – a final silence, a final insolence – and spurred her horse away from them; galloping off towards the stables without a word passing her lips.

Lord Roose commenced the arse-licking immediately, and swore that his good-daughter would be punished for her insolence. Cersei vowed that she would hold him to that, and burrowed deeper into her furs. Ramsay enquired whether the King would condescend to visit the torture detachment; an offer that was readily accepted. And Jaime stared silently at the ground as his skin began to burn with the agony of loss: with the knowledge, with the certainty, that Arya Stark was dead.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter notes

Please be warned that this chapter contains scenes of physical abuse and rape.

* * *

Ramsay followed her into her chambers. She ignored him and approached her dressing table; her fingers threading through the labyrinth of glass vials that sometimes caught the light on the snow. She uncorked milk of the poppy and drank deeply. The numbness took her. The pain stayed where it was.

The scars on her wrists were aching again; as raw and as painful as they had been at the beginning; when she had worn her chains for days and weeks and months; her arms and legs streaked with her own blood as Ramsay pounded away inside her; trying to make her cry; drilling harder when she didn't utter a sound; crooning sweetly at the blood that lingered in her smallclothes for days afterwards; as though the traitorous red stains were the cries and the screams that he failed to elicit from her; that he wanted to hear on her lips.

Then one day at breakfast – eight months into their marriage – she had reached for the mulled beer at the same time as her husband, and their hands had bumped together.

She had recoiled from Ramsay's touch as though she had been scourged, and to her astonishment, he had done the same; snatching his hand away from hers and plunging it deep into the pocket of his jerkin, before rapidly pushing out his chair and storming from the room. And in that moment she had realised – from the look on Ramsay's face; from the fear in it – that her husband had come to live for the screams of pain that she never gave him. Her only resistance. Her only wall.

The realisation had been like receiving a dagger as a surreptitious nameday present from some caring older sibling, and ignoring Lord Roose's testy demand as to what ailed his son, she had risen from her seat and followed Ramsay to his chambers.

She had found him lounged in a chair with his breeches tangled about his ankles and his cock bulging in his hand.

'What do you want?' Ramsay had growled; saliva flying from his lips.

She had walked silently towards him, hitched up her skirts and straddled him.

'I want you to fuck me bloody,' she had whispered; when in truth, she had wanted to vomit.

But his cock had impaled her body like a spike skewering a severed head, and she had screamed and cried as Ramsay had torn at her with his teeth and nails, and fucked into the soreness between her legs like a pig rutting in a barnyard.

She had never worn chains again, and had been lifted from the deepest of the seven hells into the second-deepest.

_For all the good it's done me._

'Joffrey seems a pleasant enough cock!' Ramsay bouncingly declared from somewhere behind her.

'Joffrey chopped my father's head off,' Arya murmured; replacing the milk of the poppy on the table as Ramsay's arms locked hard around her waist and pinned her arms to her sides.

Immediately, she struggled. Immediately, he tightened his grip.

'Is little lady sad?' he crooned into her ear; innocent and sincere as a new-born babe.

'Little lady need to rest before the feast,' she retorted; trying to elbow him in the stomach; 'let go of me and go away.'

'Do you think that Joffrey would hunt a girl with me if I asked him to?' Ramsay mused; as though she had not spoken.

'Ramsay, you promised me.'

'But I grow so _bored_, my love. What am I to do when I'm bored?'

'Try reading a book.'

Ramsay hummed tunelessly, and tightened his grip on her; his fingers gripping her skin as he kissed her neck.

'The Queen Dowager amuses me,' Ramsay mumbled against her as she once again began to squirm in his arms, 'soft as a maiden's cunt, and convinced her skin is made of chainmail. Do you think she'd be open to correction?'

'No, I _don't _think she'd be open to correction,' Arya growled in frustration; her fingers digging into Ramsay's forearms, 'she only fucks people who obey every word that comes pouring out of her cunt mouth.'

'Whom do you mean?' Ramsay asked.

'Don't act like you haven't heard the rumours,' Arya snarled, 'now let _go_ of me.'

Ramsay leaned into her and whispered; his lips brushing her ear; his cock hard against her arse.

'Shall we see if they're _both_ open to correction?' he murmured.

'You can stab the sister with your cock, if you want,' Arya snapped, 'the only thing I'm stabbing the brother with is a carving knife.'

'Without fucking him first?' Ramsay hummed; sounding surprised.

'I don't like blonds,' Arya said.

'_And_ _I don't like him_,' Ramsay snarled abruptly into her ear; in a tone that she knew, and feared, and hated herself for fearing, '_he looks at you_.'

'Really?' Arya matter-of-factly asked; brutally swallowing the fear as it welled up within her; 'shall I make him stop?'

Ramsay was holding her hard enough to crush her ribs to powder.

'I can't breathe,' Arya whispered.

Ramsay's hand closed over hers, and he gently slid their fingers into place; locking them together.

'_I_ will make him stop, my love,' he said, 'there's no need to worry your pretty head about it. Tell me, if I put his eyes out, would you wear them around your neck?'

Once again, she tried to break free, and once again, he stopped her; the rack and wheel of his arms turning her struggles to chains about her waist that tightened with every attempt to break free.

'I've wanted to gut Jaime Lannister since I was one-and-ten,' Arya snarled, raking over Ramsay's knuckles with her nails; '_I _will make him stop. _You _won't touch him.'

'_Pleeeeeeease?_' Ramsay squealed; rocking her back and forth like a child.

'_No_,' Arya snapped.

'Why?'

'He's mine.'

There was a brief silence, followed by the near-tangible sound of the thoughts in Ramsay's mind clicking softly into place. Then he seized the collar of her coat and slammed her, face-first, into the wall, with the force of a butcher thawing a frozen side of beef. And she was tasting blood in her mouth and seeing blood in her eyes and swiping at Ramsay's face with a dagger torn from her waist as he plunged a fist into her stomach and another into her eyes.

For a moment, the world was red. The dagger slipped from her fingers as her strength left her; as the back of her head crashed into the floor, and pillars of grey mountain fog began to dance across her vision; like pain made people.

Ramsay was on top of her, and his hands were scarring her wrists. For a moment, she saw his face, sliced open from lip to ear. And yet he was smiling at her, like he had won. Like he would always win.

She spat in his face. It made blood pour down his cheeks like rain. And he dealt her a blow that made her vision crumble, and her thoughts turn black inside her.

'He can't be yours, my love, because you have nothing,' Ramsay whispered to her, 'nothing, nothing, _nothing_.'

And his fingers were at the laces of her breeches, and her silence was rising up. Her only resistance. Her only wall.


	5. Chapter 5

The house of a man famous for murdering his guests _and_ for 'not partaking' was the last place on earth that the Lord of Casterly Rock had expected to find a thirty-year-old Dornish red. Nevertheless, Tyrion _had _found it – hidden away in a corner of the yard when he had stepped outside to relieve himself – and though Tyrion imagined that the wine was no doubt intended to impress some higher person than himself (probably Joffrey), he could not stand the idea of leaving such an inestimably glorious vintage out in the yard as though it were bilge water. He was doing the wine's owner a _favour_, surely, by ensuring that it was drunk before it met with a fate that usually befell treasures left in precarious positions.

Tyrion, his head spinning with viticultural delirium, put this argument to Jaime as the two of them stood together in a dark corner of the great hall of the Dreadfort, waiting for the welcoming feast to begin. Jaime laughed with a little too much enthusiasm, pounded Tyrion theatrically on the back and congratulated him on being a devious little shit. Tyrion stared gravely up at him and said nothing. His brother had never been a good actor. His need to pretend had always been greater than his ability to be subtle.

Tyrion had always known of the curious, yet deep-set friendship that had sprung up between Jaime and Arya Stark since her return from Harrenhal. He had known it from the mysterious smile that would flicker across his brother's face each time the girl spoke, or frowned, or laughed. He had known it from the way that she had always seemed to pop up in their private conversations as an example to prove or disprove a point about women, or courtesy, or hostage-taking; or as something for Tyrion to laugh about when Jaime, furious, would tell a story about some or other argument that he had had with the girl and demand his opinion on the matter; and when the girl turned out to be right (and she almost always turned out to be right), Jaime would accuse his brother of treason, kick over his chair and slam the door behind him as he left the room in a whirlwind of righteous rage. Tyrion had never quite understood how such a friendship could even exist, given the disastrous situation of their Houses and the considerable difference in their ages and dispositions. Nonetheless, he supposed it was harmless enough. His brother had never had many friends, and Tyrion had never known another person in greater need of them.

Then Father had died, and Jaime had never mentioned her again.

Any attempt on Tyrion's part to ask questions, or even to say the girl's name was deflected with the same swiftness with which one might dismiss the potential humanity of a mortal enemy or a killer of children; and the _smile_ that had always accompanied the mention of her, or the sight of her, was replaced by a boiling, smouldering, loathing stare; to the point where Jaime could scarcely stand to be in the same room as her.

Tyrion had made the assumption (perfectly justified, in his opinion) that his brother had said or done something stupid, and had been so mercilessly berated for his stupidity that his pig-headed arrogance had overcome all other considerations, and had somehow succeeded in transforming years of esteem and regard into hatred and intolerance. Tyrion had also made the assumption that it would blow over in a matter of days, knowing Jaime, and that everything would continue as normal once his brother had swallowed his pride.

But it hadn't blown over – not the situation; not Jaime's seething refusal to talk about it – and Tyrion had soon found himself placing all his hopes on the supposition that the poor girl's departure for the North could not come soon enough.

But when Arya Stark had left King's Landing to marry the Bastard-No-Longer of the Dreadfort, Jaime's agitation had only worsened; shaping itself into a crimson, bone-deep circle of silence, sleeplessness, and violent, motionless fury: a perpetual burning at the stake without being able to move or scream; a self-imposed death within, like giving oneself over to a master torturer with the words 'kill me as slowly as you can.'

At one point, Tyrion had begun to entertain serious fears that his brother might do himself harm.

'Do you want to kill yourself?' he had asked; one evening after too much wine.

Jaime had briefly considered the question.

'I'm too fond of myself to do that,' he had snorted in reply.

'Brother,' Tyrion had hastily ventured; the wine making him bold; 'may I ask –'

'No,' Jaime had snapped, 'you may not.'

_That was five years ago, and things have scarcely improved at all,_ Tyrion thought; glancing worriedly up at Jaime as his brother drained yet another glass of wine; his cheeks flushing with a false internal glow; and for a while the two of them stood in silence, sardonically observing the remnants of Northern nobility that were congregating like crows in the space around Cersei, Lord Roose and Margaery: watching, intently and jealously, to see which lord or lady would be approached first; staring, when they grew bored of watching, at Joffrey and Ramsay; who were deep in conversation and standing rather closer together than propriety dictated; Joffrey blushing like a maiden and Ramsay gazing at him as intently as a man in the process of seducing one, all the while sporting a hideous cut on his cheek that he seemed to have acquired in the three hours since the court's arrival.

_Shaving accident?_

Tyrion shook his head in bewilderment. He was more concerned with the consequences of allowing matters between two such revolting individuals to proceed any further than he was with Lord Ramsay's steadiness of hand, and was about to make a mental note to that effect when the double doors groaned open, and Arya stumped gracelessly down the stairs and into the hall, wearing the same dirty riding clothes that she had worn earlier that day.

Tyrion could not help but grin at her impertinence. Then he noticed her face.

Bruises blackened the girl's face like great splotches of paint. Her skin was torn in several places – on her cheekbone; on her forehead – and her lip was bleeding almost carelessly; as though she had forgotten about it. She crossed the hall slowly; walking steadily and determinedly despite an obvious desire to limp; and Tyrion found himself choking down both indignation and horror at the sight of her curtseying awkwardly to her husband, who smiled widely at her and offered her his arm.

'Allow me.'

She took it, and smiled back.

'My lord.'

Tyrion was joining with the rest of the hall in eavesdropping on their conversation – 'my love, what has _happened _to you?' 'you have a short memory,' – when a sudden movement above him attracted his attention, and he was leaping rapidly forward and seizing hold of the back of Jaime's cloak as his brother – his face dark, his eyes terrible, and his sword and dagger already in hand – began to storm out of their corner and towards Ramsay; apparently with every intention of impaling him on his sword and pulling his intestines out through his arsehole.

'Jaime, _no_!' Tyrion growled; digging in his heels and thanking the gods for the obscurity of their position.

'_Take your fucking hands off me,_' Jaime growled in return; his tone nothing short of vicious as he wrenched his cloak from Tyrion's grasp, and snarled when his brother promptly threw his arms around his knees instead.

'_Come outside_, _Jaime_.'

'_Don't make me fucking hurt you –_'

'_Come outside NOW._'

Jaime tried once more to step around Tyrion, and was rewarded for his efforts with a crushing stamp to his foot, and Tyrion was cursing his height and beginning to wonder what would happen if Jaime did indeed grow angry enough to run him through, when Lord Lucion was announced; stamping into the hall beside his septa and looking thoroughly displeased by his new leather doublet and freshly-trimmed hair.

The sight of the boy made Jaime freeze.

'Brother, come outside,' Tyrion insisted, '_come_.'

Jaime looked down at his brother and slowly lowered his sword, and Tyrion seized his chance to grab hold of Jaime's cloak once more; only releasing it when they were safely out in the corridor.

'You _fool!_' Tyrion hissed, '_what if you'd killed him_ – ?'

'Don't pretend that you'd go into mourning if I had,' Jaime spat; beginning to pace.

'– your host's fucking _son_, Jaime?' Tyrion persisted, '_in front of hundreds of people?_'

'Fuck my host and fuck hundreds of people,' Jaime snarled, 'it would be justice, and you bloody know it.'

'Justice for what?' Tyrion demanded.

Jaime stopped pacing, and began to glare at the walls around them like an animal trapped in a cage.

'For…the Red Wedding,' he stammered, 'for the bloody Red Wedding.'

Tyrion stared at him.

_I do not believe it._

'For _her_, do you mean?' he asked.

Jaime's eyes were wide, angry and humiliated.

_I do not believe it._

'That vicious _cunt_ did _that_ to her –' Jaime was growling.

'I know, Jaime –' Tyrion said; trying to sound soothing.

'– every person in that fucking hall knows it; half of them probably _heard _it when it was happening; and they stand there drinking wine and being breezy and looking at her as though _she's_ the one who –'

'I know, Jaime,' Tyrion repeated; hoping that his assent would calm him; but his brother was beginning to pace again; folding his arms; unfolding them; sweeping his hands through his hair and breathing so heavily that Tyrion was alarmed by it.

'Jaime, why don't you sit?'

'I can't. I can't. I can't. I can't.'

Jaime repeated the words like a litany; like rhyming words, unrhyming words, to keep his sanity whole, and Tyrion felt the thing in his chest maul itself a little more, and confusion sink deeper into his blood.

_If he loved her, why didn't he marry her? _Tyrion thought, _why did he let her…why did he allow her to come here…why…_

Cersei's high, false laugh echoed out from the depths of the hall, making both of them jump, and Tyrion took hold of Jaime's cloak again and gave it a gentle tug.

'Jaime, sit down.'

Jaime wrenched his cloak from Tyrion's grasp.

'_Don't_,' he growled.

'Brother,' Tyrion said, 'I'm sure your mind is on higher things, but if you do not sit – on your haunches, at the very least – then I cannot embrace you.'

Jaime stared at him; as though Tyrion's words were the strangest he had ever heard. Nevertheless, he slumped onto one of the stone benches that lined the corridor and let Tyrion hug him; leaning into his brother like dead weight. He was deathly cold, and shivers blanketed his body like snow.

'I've failed her,' Jaime murmured, 'I've failed her.'

* * *

Jaime didn't know how long he sat there.

It was long enough for him to tell Tyrion to leave him and return to the feast. Long enough for the sounds of revelry to gutter out like candles. Long enough for the candles themselves to be snuffed out for the night, and for the Dreadfort to grow so silent around him that no one, not even the servants, stirred abroad.

He remembered the day that she had left King's Landing. _The day that she was dragged from King's Landing._ The sound of her screams, and the clink of her chains. Her small frame held fiercely and cruelly in place as the men forced her into the carriage, then chained her into it.

And himself. _Me. _Standing there. Doing nothing. Thinking. Doing nothing.

_If I try to stop it, they'll know._

_If I try to stop it, she'll know._

_And even if I _do_ stop it, who will I propose in Ramsay's place? Myself?_

_I'm Kingsguard._

_I'm the Kingslayer._

_I'm Cersei._

_I'm the South._

_Excuses. _

Jaime felt his head drop into his hands.

_I saved her life to bring her this. To allow her to be brought to this. What does that make me?_

_What_

_Am_

_I_

…

The sound of rapidly approaching footsteps rang out like firecrackers in the night, and yanked Jaime from his reverie like hands pulling a drowning child from a lake. He looked up; the faint half-dark of the torches piercing, then restoring his eyes, as Ramsay Bolton came shambling down the corridor and into the light; a flagon of wine clutched in his fist; an ill-fitting nightshirt ill-concealing a diminutive but muscular frame where flesh and bone coiled together like serpents.

Jaime, remembering his courtesies like a good little boy, promptly rose to his feet and bowed.

'My lord,' he intoned.

Ramsay, his pale grey eyes swimming with drunkenness, was instantly on his guard: a dagger appearing in both fists; his body adopting a fighting stance as he squinted ahead of him and let the flagon of wine drop to the floor.

'Who's there?' Ramsay hissed.

'The Stranger,' Jaime replied.

And he danced through the blades like a man born to it, and buried his sword in the Bastard's chest.

Blood drenched Jaime's clothing like hot wine as Ramsay collapsed backwards; his body crumpling to the floor with a metallic screech as the sword point protruding from his back drew a white line on the wall behind him; a white line daubed with blood.

Jaime could smell Ramsay on him; a scent of sweat and blood that went bone-deep. And he thought of Arya walking every day in that stench and knowing that she would never be free of it, and he stepped forward once more – one step, then another – to finish this.

'This,' he murmured to Ramsay's semi-prostrate form, 'is for her.'

The dying man was staring at the air above Jaime's shoulder, and smiling toothily; every one of his teeth painted red.

And when Jaime turned, Arya was there; pale and silent in her riding clothes; watching him draw his dagger; her eyes wide with fear.


	6. Chapter 6

Arya walked slowly forwards to where Ramsay lay dying against the wall; his daggers falling useless at his sides and Jaime's sword still piercing his stomach.

And everything in Jaime screamed silently out to her to be careful; to back away from him; to run and keep running. Nevertheless, he remained silent, his voice inexplicably ripped from him as the girl, the young woman, the person, the human being that he had once betrayed crouched in front of Ramsay and stared; her fingers moving to her husband's cheek and awkwardly stroking it; like a child touching a wild animal that it feared had not been tamed.

Ramsay smiled at her apprehension; his grin widening as her fingers drew patterns in the blood on his face.

Then she wrenched one of Ramsay's daggers from his fist and stabbed him; once, twice, three times, four times; the blade gouging holes in the Bastard's stomach and spraying her with blood.

Ramsay tried to push her away; pounding weakly on her shoulders and chest as she thrust the blade into his stomach again and again and again; his hands slumping heavily to the floor as the strength bled from him; his pale and trembling fingers groping carefully in the dirt, and closing slowly around a gleam of dirty steel. The second dagger.

Jaime's heart dropped out of his chest, but somehow continued to beat – wildly; madly – as he lunged forwards, seized Arya around the waist and wrenched her away from Ramsay in a whirlwind of himself and her; turning his back on the dying man to shield her body with his as she continued to stab silently and violently at the empty air.

Jaime felt a sudden pain erupt across his lower back; as though someone had dragged a needle across his skin. The ache flared briefly, then died, and as he turned once more in the Bastard's direction, this time with the benefit of a few feet's distance, Arya grew perfectly still in his arms; her back small and skeletal against his chest, like the body of a starving child.

Ramsay lay dead against the wall. His pale grey eyes were large, and staring upwards into nothing, as though the blood-drenched walls and floors were repugnant to him. Jaime gently deposited Arya on the ground, knowing her dislike of being carried, and she turned, very slowly, to face him; her clothing as red as the walls.

She gazed at Jaime as completely as she might have done earlier that afternoon, were it not for what he had done; were it not for what he hadn't. He saw the angry young woman of five years ago: in the practise yard with her stick, in the sept with her hands, in the boat with her mouth, with her voice, with all of her. And his heart was wrenching in his chest, and choking him with the passage of too much blood, and his nails were grinding hard into his palms with the effort of standing still; with leaving her be; with not picking her up again and enfolding her and coming undone with relief that she was still here; that she was still her.

And slowly, she began to disappear again; behind her survivor's walls. And slowly, Jaime felt himself sink again into the place that he had made for himself; too weak and too afraid to pull her back.

The pain came so quickly that he did not even have time to brace himself against a wall.

It boiled up within him like a wave; a wave made of iron and Valyrian steel that seemed to split his bones asunder and tear them from his flesh like thorns; leaving only skin, blood and maimed flesh for the fires that burned high and excruciating through every inch of what was left of him. His knees were crumbling to dust beneath him; crimson ghosts were roaring up across his vision and turning to agony as he felt his skull crack open against the earth; and he could feel Arya's fingers ghosting over his body and digging into his skin; her words at his ear; her words on the other side of the world as she shouted, as she whispered, as she cried out:

'Did he cut you? Jaime, _did he cut you?_'


	7. Chapter 7

He couldn't see. The air was colder, danker, and his entire body felt possessed by it; the cold brought on by the shivering; the shivering brought on by the pain: his skin scraped off his bones with the ends of his own ribs.

She was trying to put something to his lips. A bottle, or a vial. He tried to open his mouth. He couldn't.

Her fingers slipped between his teeth, and he tasted her blood in his mouth; her fingertips fighting his body to bring back the breath that no longer existed.

_I'm hurting you…hurting you…I…_

Then his jaws clamped down on the bottle, and the liquid gushed nauseatingly into his mouth; burning through the white hot paralysis of pain like fire through snow.

* * *

When he awoke, the low ceiling, narrow walls and lingering, numbing, all-consuming desire to throw up momentarily made him think he was in hell. The seventh circle, of course. Nothing less for him.

He turned out to be seated, not in hell, but in the next worst thing: against the wall in cupboard or a closet of some kind, too narrow to stretch out his legs and too deep to have a hope of being anything but freezing fucking cold.

Arya was seated opposite him, taking repeated and liberal swigs from a bottle of something that looked suspiciously like milk of the poppy, and staring blankly at him as though he were some absurd yet compelling creature that had wondered into her home unannounced. The low light made her skin seem copper, and the bruises on her face the colour of charcoal. Anger rose within him again…then the realisation that now, there was no one to be angry with except himself.

'What happened?' he asked; his voice softer than he had intended.

Arya opened her mouth hesitantly, then closed it again, as though she were unaccustomed to speaking.

'Ramsay…' she murmured; her eyes flickering away from his as the corners of her mouth turning gravely downwards; 'Ramsay… enjoys poisoning things and sticking them in people. He keeps the antidotes so he can bring them back before they die.'

The words crushed the inside of Jaime's skull.

'Why?' he asked.

'So that they live with the fear that he will do it again,' she replied.

Jaime stared at her, and felt the clink of chains ring out once more in his head; binding his memory to the rack _saying nothing, doing nothing_; and he realised that _this_ – this thing that they had done together, that stained their clothes a mutual shade of red – it left them with nothing but memory now, now that the immediate agony; the immediate cause of it, was gone. They had nothing left but the months of silence and the bursts of speech in between…and then, what he had done. What he hadn't done.

'I tried to kill him five times,' Arya murmured; more to herself than to him; her eyes burning with a raging flame that had not been present before; 'all five before Lucion was born. The first three times, I was caught, and punished. The last two…I had a dagger in my hand one time, and a pillow in my hand the other time…and I couldn't do it. I could only stand there…'

She took a swig from the bottle, swallowed hard, and stared harder; as though by simply looking at him, she could perceive the truth.

'Why did you do it?' Arya asked.

'Why did you help me?' Jaime question-answered; the words 'anger and guilt' failing to form on his lips.

Arya tightened her grip on the bottle, and said nothing, while Jaime stared questioningly at the foul-tasting, milky-white stuff that she was pouring down her throat like a child left alone with a jug of custard, and flinched.

'Wine doesn't work anymore,' Arya remarked; answering his question before he asked it; reverting, in spite of everything, to the manner of the past; her voice enfolding a raging silence, a complete absence of self-pity, desire for comfort, or condemnation, that was worse than anything else she could have said.

Her fingertips trailed swathes of bloody redness across the glass surface of the bottle, and for the first time he remembered them between his teeth, forcing his mouth open to pour the antidote down his throat.

Jaime reached for her hands without thinking. She flinched away from him. The blood fury in her eyes quenched itself like candlefire killed between human fingers, and she glared and glared and glared; as though it were the only strength that she had left.

Jaime imagined that the appropriate thing to do would be to put his hands on his knees, or somewhere else where she could see them, and sweetly murmur 'I would not hurt you'; whereupon the poor, wounded maiden would stretch out her hand to him and allow herself to be tended; blushing brightly each time one of his fingertips touched hers and glancing surreptitiously at his handsome face each time he looked away from her.

Instead, he found himself drawling 'for fuck's sake, if I were going to break your bloody hands, don't you think I'd have done it by now?' and rolling his eyes at her while his heart beat itself bloody inside his chest at every stupid, uncouth word that came pouring out of his smart mouth…every word that made him sound like a bastard who could watch a fifteen-year-old girl be sent to hell and do nothing.

_A bastard who could love a fifteen-year-old girl and send her to hell anyway._

A tentative, yet commanding scrape of calloused skin against his fingertips called his eyes downwards, and Arya's fingers began to curl slowly inwards; drawing his hand into her palm.

Jaime slowly took her hand in his, and cradled it in his palm so that hers faced upwards. Her skin was boiling; boiling like the blood and the bite-marks that marred each of her fingertips; bite marks from his teeth; from saving him. He looked up at her again as he traced the lines of her palm, and while every line of her face was broken, grazed or shattered in some way, her eyes were burning bright like night fires; an inch…a single inch…of the person he had known. The person that had trusted him.

His thumb grazed her wrist, and felt the unmistakeable coarseness of scar tissue there. His fingers touched her shirt cuff; the past rushing once again into the space between them, and when he pulled her sleeve rapidly up to the elbow; the skin of her wrist was marked with a red bracelet a good three inches wide.

A scar left by chains.

Jaime had barely felt horror coiling black and anguished within him when the breath was knocked from his lungs and his back slammed into the wall, and Arya was holding a knife to his throat; her legs coiled beneath her like a wolf preparing to spring as her right hand dug painfully into his shoulder; bracing herself against him.

'_Don't touch me there_,' she growled; vapour pouring from her mouth as her teeth bared themselves; her eyes seeming to flash yellow in the gloom; 'you _never _touch me there. _Never_.'

Jaime's pulse raged red and violent against the blade that lingered at his throat like a lover, but no other part of him moved; nothing except his chest that rose and fell, faster and faster; as his instinct to fight back began to engulf him; as the heat of her body became the heat of his.

He could have overpowered her easily. He didn't.

She'd been threatening to kill him since she was one-and-ten, and she had much more reason now than she had had then. He wouldn't begrudge her his life if she wanted it.

Arya seemed to realise this as she sat there; perched on his lap like some murderous, childlike bird disappointed by the idea of a kill coming too quickly. She waited for him – her wide grey eyes like Valyrian steel – her left hand perfectly steady as she grasped the blade; her right hand trembling as she gripped his shoulder; her thumb brushing the naked skin of his neck like a single, scalding spark.

'Fight back,' she rasped.

Jaime mutely shook his head and said nothing.

'Please,' Arya whispered; tears beginning to form in her eyes.

'It is…' Jaime murmured; resting his head against the wall; 'it is as it should be.'

The knife pressed down harder on his throat, nicking him; and her face, as his blood began to flow, would not have been more terrible to look upon had he stuck a dagger in her. The tears nestled between her eyelashes broke free; coursing down her swollen cheeks like streaks of paint. Jaime, scarcely aware of what he was doing, slowly raised his hand to wipe them away.

She stood up before he could touch her: without warning and graceless as ever as she replaced the dagger at her waist, and before he could speak, or even think, she had stormed from the room in a tempest of silence and slammed the door behind her.

* * *

Chapter notes

Updating will be very sporadic over the next few weeks, as I am going into a hellishly busy period at school. Apologies in advance, and many, many thanks, both for reading and for general awesomeness! :-D


	8. Chapter 8

Author note

Awesome people, I am back!

Sorry for the lack of updates; things have been so crazy at school that they defy description. Hopefully, another such period of insaneness is not due again for a good long while, so this, my longest hiatus ever, will probably not occur again for a good long while. Thank you so much for your patience!

We pick up on the morning after Ramsay's murder.

* * *

When Lucion woke up, he found Mother lying on top of the covers with her arms around him. Often, when she kissed him goodnight, he would beg her to stay with him, because there were things in the dark that he couldn't fight by himself. Often, she would refuse…but when he woke up the next morning, she would always be there, holding him tightly as he slept. Sometimes he even pretended to be asleep, so that she would stay longer, and he wouldn't have to eat his stupid breakfast and go to his stupid lessons and spar against stupid boys that he could have beaten with his eyes closed.

This morning, Mother's face was purple: purple and pink, with some blue in between. She must have fallen down the stairs again. And he wanted to spit at her, as he wanted to every time that she fell down the stairs, or missed her footing in the dark, or banged her own head into the wall: 'I'm not a child anymore. I'm _five_.'

But he would never do that, because he knew that it made her happy; thinking that he didn't know; that he didn't notice what Father did to her.

It had only happened in front of him once. He'd been two or three, and Father had been teaching him a new game. It had involved lying on his stomach in bed and seeing how quickly he could squirm out of his breeches using only one hand. Lucion hadn't understood the point at all, and hadn't had the opportunity to discover it, because no sooner had he wriggled out of his breeches and cheered at his own cleverness that the door had opened, and he had heard Mother's voice.

She had screamed like the red men dying in the yard.

She had screamed and screamed and screamed, and called Father a lot of things that Lucion didn't understand; Father had begun to shout back at her, his face turning red as blood; and Lucion had tried to explain that it was only a game; that there was nothing to be upset about. But she had kept on screaming – screaming and screaming and screaming – until Father had drawn his sword and bashed the hilt into the side of Mother's head. She had fallen to the ground – dead, Lucion had thought – and he had run to her, still without his breeches, and shaken her and cried and screamed at her to wake up. Then the corridors around them had begun to echo with the sounds of running feet, and Father had shoved him away into a corner; spitting at him to put his trousers back on and to stop crying like a whore being broken in.

Lucion had never found out what it meant, but after that day, he had never seen them fight again. He would only know because of what Mother would look like the next morning: purple, and pink, and blue.

Mother was pulling gently at his left ear.

'Time to wake up, wildling,' she whispered.

'I don't want to get up,' Lucion grumbled, 'why can't I stay in bed?'

'Because you're far too young to stay in bed all day.'

'When will I be old enough?'

'When you're eighty.'

'That's too long to wait.'

'So get up, then.'

'I will if you tell me a story first.'

Mother sighed audibly, and Lucion's heart sank.

Then she smiled, and nodded silently, and he sat rapidly up in bed and wrapped his arms eagerly around his knees, waiting.

'Shall it be about Ser Rickard the Brave?' Lucion asked.

'If you like,' Mother answered, and she launched immediately into a story that he had never heard before; a new one from out of her head.

'Good King Willem had been fighting a war against his brother, Bad King John, for years and years and years,' she said; her eyes beginning to cloud, 'millions of people had died already, and so much blood had been spilled into the soil of both their kingdoms that the crops had failed, and kept on failing. The people of King Willem's kingdom would have starved if he hadn't been putting grain away every year, to feed people in case there was a famine, and it might have continued that way forever. Then one day, King Willem realised that there wasn't enough grain left to feed the people for another year, so he decided that it was time to heal the breach between him and his brother, Bad King John, because if the war ended, then there would be no more blood in the soil and the crops would grow again. So he sent the Lord Commander of his Kingsguard –'

'Ser Rickard the Brave!' Lucion interrupted; clapping his hands in excitement.

'Ser Rickard the Brave,' Mother conceded, 'to negotiate with his brother, and to help end the war.'

Lucion pouted. This didn't sound like a very interesting story.

'When Ser Rickard arrived in Bad King John's kingdom, it was the hottest day of the year, even though it was autumn, and winter was coming,' Mother continued; her voice fading to a whisper as she spoke the words; 'there was an enormous welcoming party waiting for Ser Rickard at the docks, with the King, and the Queen, and all their children, six princes and six princesses. Unlike his brother, Bad King John hadn't been saving grain in case the crops failed, so behind the courtiers and the septons and the knights and all the other people that King John had brought along to welcome Ser Rickard to his kingdom stood the people, starving. They were thin as skeletons, so it looked as though King John was accompanied by an army of the dead.'

Lucion liked this more.

'King John saw the look on Ser Rickard's face as he welcomed him to his kingdom,' Mother said, 'and the horror that he saw there did not please him. So on the way back to the palace, he tried to make himself look good; talking about all the bread he was giving out and the things he was doing to help his people, and make their lives better. But all Ser Rickard could see was the crowd of skeletons lining the streets; the living, breathing proof that King John was a liar, and a bad man. It eventually turned out to be a very good thing that Ser Rickard was looking at the crowd, for if he hadn't been, then he wouldn't have seen the man.'

'What man?' Lucion demanded.

Mother remained silent; her mouth curling into a smile at his agitation.

'_What man_?' Lucion screeched.

'The man who was racing through the crowd, towards the king, with a dagger in his hand!'

'Did he kill him?'

'No.'

'Awwwwwww.'

'He didn't kill him, because Ser Rickard drew his sword, and killed the man before he could kill the king.'

'Why?'

'Because he was an honourable man.'

'It's stupid.'

'Honourable men usually are.'

'Do _not _call Ser Rickard stupid!'

'Don't ask so many questions, then!'

Lucion crossly folded his arms and waited for her to continue.

'When the crowd saw that Ser Rickard had killed one of their own to save Bad King's John life, it went mad with rage, and attacked the king and all the people that were with him. People started to fight in the streets – the skeletons even began to fight each other when they couldn't get to the king, because they were angry and hungry and tired of being angry and hungry; tired of their king telling lies; tired of their king doing nothing. Now in his heart, Ser Rickard rather wanted to let the crowd get at King John, because he deserved to die for what he had done. But he knew that King Willem loved his brother, even though he was a bad man, so he helped King John's own Kingsguard get their sovereign –'

'What's a sovereign?' Lucion interrupted.

'A king,' Mother replied, 'so Ser Rickard helped get the King, and Queen, and all their children safely back to the palace while the riot continued outside the castle walls. No sooner had they arrived that they noticed that one of the princesses was missing.'

'Oooooooh!' Lucion crowed.

'There's no need to sound so excited about it!' Mother exclaimed.

'Can she be dead?' Lucion asked.

'No,' Mother told him.

Lucion snorted in annoyance. This wasn't much of a story.

Mother's big grey eyes had turned sad, and damp, like water, and he wanted to tell her that she didn't need to be so upset about telling a stupid, boring story. She would think of a better one next time. It wasn't the end of the world. He wouldn't hit her, like Father would have. But she was carrying on, and he didn't want to interrupt her; even though he was sure that the end of the story wouldn't be much better than its beginning.

'The…the missing princess,' Mother was stammering, 'was the youngest and ugliest person in the entire family, and King John didn't love her the way that he was meant to love his daughter, because she fought when she was meant to listen, and was always dirtying her face and tearing her clothes. So he said to his guards: 'when she comes of age, it will be impossible to make a good match for her. She will die an old maid, or a septa, bitter and envious of other people's happiness. Better that she dies now, at the age of one-and-ten. It's more merciful, really. Much more merciful." And the Queen began to plead with Bad King John, screaming at him that he couldn't abandon the princess to the mob; and suddenly Ser Rickard was furious with himself that he had helped save a man who was evil enough to stand by and let one of his own children die. So he strode off towards the palace gates with his sword in his hand; determined to find the princess and bring her back, even if he died in the attempt.'

Lucion felt his jaw drop.

'Ser Rickard would never do that!' he insisted, 'that's _stupid_!'

'He found the princess surrounded by bad men,' Mother said softly; as though she couldn't hear him; 'half of them were laughing at her, and the other half were hitting her, and all of them were fighting amongst themselves, deciding whether they should kill her, or sell her back to the King for a hefty price. Eventually, the men decided to cut her throat, put her head on a spike and parade it outside the palace walls, to show the king that they weren't scared of him. They walked towards her with their knives drawn, and she was so weak from them hitting her that she didn't even have the strength to move.'

Lucion leaned forward in anticipation; surprising himself. He wasn't the sort of boy to care about what happened to ugly princesses. Princesses were meant to be beautiful. The ugly ones had much better die.

'One of the men took a handful of the princess' hair and yanked it back, so that her throat was taut and white and glistening like snow, while his friend took a dagger and scraped her throat with it; enjoying the way that he drew out drops of blood while she cried and trembled; never knowing exactly when her life was going to end.'

Lucion's fingers fisted in the sheets. This was wrong. This entire story was wrong.

'One of the bad man's friends grew impatient with him. 'Get on with it!' he shouted, and all the other men laughed. The man with the dagger didn't like being laughed at, so he drew his dagger rapidly to the princess' throat –'

_This is wrong; this entire story is wrong – _

'– and screamed as blood poured from his mouth, and the tip of Ser Rickard's sword popped out through his chest; skewering him like a stuck pig. His friends tried to run, but Ser Rickard chopped all their heads off – '

_This is more like it_, Lucion thought.

'– and kicked the heads aside in his haste to get to the princess, who was falling to the ground in a dead faint.'

_This is a story for girls_, Lucion thought.

'Ser Rickard caught her as she fell. And he looked at her…and he saw that she was indeed the ugliest girl he had ever seen in his life. Her face was too long and her eyes too big, and her hair was an unremarkable brown colour, like mud after the rain. And when the ugly little girl awoke, she looked up at Ser Rickard, and smiled at him, and said 'take me away from here, Ser. Please take me away from here."

_I wouldn't want to take a girl like that anywhere_, Lucion thought as Mother continued.

"Your royal father is the king here,' Ser Rickard said to the princess, 'taking you away will only mean more war. Taking you away is not honourable.' And the princess didn't even protest, or beg him to reconsider, because she knew that he would never change his mind; that if she had been beautiful, and desirable, like her sisters, Ser Rickard would have started a thousand wars, merely to do her will. So… she got very sad, and cried a lot.'

When Mother didn't continue, Lucion stared at her in astonishment.

'That's _it_?'

'Yes.'

'It's stupid!'

'Why?'

'Why didn't the stupid princess save _herself_? Why didn't she just run away?'

Mother's face was whiter than snow, and her eyes were sad and damp again, but the tips of her fingers were hot as she stroked Lucion's hair and told him, in a soft voice:

'Sometimes people can't help being weak.'

Lucion was about to tell her that such people needed a good kick up the arse when the air was torn suddenly asunder by a blood-curdling scream that seemed to cut through Lucion's flesh and pierce the marrow of his bones.

Mother leapt to her feet as the scream came again; ringing through the Dreadfort like a chorus of demons weeping at the fall of hell. Lucion's heart began to beat very quickly, so quickly that it almost choked him, and when he looked at Mother's face, he could see all of his own fear.

'Murder!' the voice screamed, 'murder and butchery!'

Lucion relaxed at once. He was familiar enough with both murder and butchery to be beyond caring much about either. Mother, on the other hand, was pale as an innocent who had never seen either, and Lucion suddenly realised that there was no curiosity in her face. Her fear was the opposite of his. She feared what she already knew.

'Stay here,' Mother told him, drawing her dagger, and as she strode towards the door, Lucion was seized by a sudden, unaccountable desire to beg her to stay; to stop her from facing whatever had caused the screams from hell; from the tumult that shook the halls of the Dreadfort as though it were a time of war.

* * *

Chapter notes

The concept of this chapter was inspired by a scene from _Little Dorrit_.


	9. Chapter 9

The cold slammed into Arya like a mace as she ran barefoot in her shift with her dagger boiling in her fist, towards the place of the screams; the place where she had set herself free.

Joffrey was on his knees cradling Ramsay's body, and as he let out a howl, Arya realised that it was _Joffrey_ who had screamed rather than the servant girl or chamber maid that she had spent all night imagining might be the one to discover him.

Lord Roose was staring down at the king with barely-concealed disdain; his eyes like dirty ice that smouldered at the realisation that _he_ should be the one howling in agony; not some spoilt child-adult that had known Ramsay for less than twenty-four hours.

Arya could not bring herself to think about the implications of Lucion's being left heir both to the Dreadfort and to the Wardenship of the North. Such thoughts had nested in her mind all night, like hornets of dread and foreboding and fear, so she silently joined the assembled crowd of people in staring bemusedly at the weeping king and in wondering what was going to happen next. And as she stared, her eyes began to take in the true nature of the scene: its redness.

She and Jaime had made much more of a mess than she had noticed at the time. The floor beneath Ramsay's body, and the wall behind it, looked as though several pots of crimson paint had been slung at them by a two year old. The eerie whiteness of Ramsay's skin was almost reptilian against it….that eeriness that she had always hated; the whiteness of his cock as he fucked into her and the redness as he fucked out.

_I've covered your whiteness with your own red today, you bastard_.

And as she stood looking at her dead husband; at the hole in his chest; at the holes in his stomach, and at Joffrey gingerly touching each of them as he cried, she realised that she had finally done it. She'd killed him. Not like those other times, when she had had the chance to, and had stood helpless and unmoving. She'd killed him. She'd finally killed him. He was dead.

Arya felt a shadow stir in the crowd, and looked up. Jaime was there, looking down at Joffrey, looking down at the work they had done together, and for a moment, she almost smiled; the small part of her that was still five-and-ten, and in love, and stupid.

Then he looked at her with his eyes that struck like hammers, and she remembered what had shot through her when his fingers had touched the scars on her wrists; the panic, the anger, the violation that she had felt, because her scars were there because of him, because he had abandoned her; because he had let them bring her here; no better than Ramsay; no better.

A burst of swearing, shoving and jostling announced the arrival of the Bastard's Boys: Ramsay's pets; Lord Roose's pets; the men that had held her down in the beginning, when Ramsay had been too hard and too lazy to take the trouble to chain her up. Ramsay had never let them share her with him, a concession that she refused to be grateful for, and as she remembered how her bruised body had felt, sprawled naked and writhing beneath their hands, the same shame and anger that she felt each time she passed one of them in the halls swept through her, and to her mortification, she found tears beginning to sting her eyes and her skin beginning to crawl, infested with vermin, with filth, with _this place_ and these people that Jaime had sent her to, JAIME, who was no better than Ramsay, no better; _I need milk of the poppy – _

But every time she looked up at him, she wanted to smile, and every time she felt the corners of her mouth turning upwards, her heart shattered; and through her tears, she could see Lord Roose watching her.

She let the tears come and determined not to look at Jaime again, _Lord Roose suspects something, he suspects, _so she looked at the Bastard's Boys instead; ridiculous, unkempt and macabre in their various stages of undress, carrying whichever weapons they had happened to seize on their way out of their beds. Sour Alyn clutched a meat cleaver and wore only his smallclothes, Yellow Dick's cock was only half-concealed by an undersized sleeping shift, _I need milk of the poppy_ and Skinner carried his whip with him; a weapon whose touch Arya could still feel in every bone in her back; in every groove; in every scar as Margaery arrived; pushing aside the Bastard's Boys to get to Joffrey's side; ignoring them as they formed a scraggly circle around their chief and stared dumbly at the corpse, and then at Lord Roose; like the body of a festering maggot that had lost half its head and had no idea if the other half still functioned.

Margaery had knelt beside Joffrey, and had begun to shush him and comfort him and hold him to her ample bosom; her chest heaving as Joffrey buried his face in her teats and began to blubber.

Arya felt eyes on her once more; a gaze that drew her own upwards like a siren song, and it was Jaime again, the stupid, yellow-haired shit; spotless, like she was; white, golden, not marked by a single drop of blood, his gaze enveloping her as he beheld her, bare-armed, barefoot and vulnerable in her shift.

Sour Alyn and Skinner were both staring at her as though they wanted to bend her over Ramsay's corpse and fuck her now that he couldn't stop them.

Jaime stared at her as though he wanted to drape a cloak over her shoulders.

'Arrest him!' Joffrey shrieked.

Arya's lungs turned to stone as her eyes ripped away from Jaime's towards the mad king, _he knows, he knows, he saw, somehow he saw, someone told him_, and a gaping void opened up within her; slicing her insides like battle-axes _I'm going to die, he's going to die, dear gods no, Lucion, what will they do to Lucion – _

But Yellow Dick was the one being pounced on by the Kingsguard, and he struggled as madly as Arya's thoughts within her as she watched without understanding.

'Your _Grace_?' Lord Roose was protesting.

'I WANT THIS MAN ARRESTED AND EXECUTED FOR THE MURDER OF YOUR SON!' Joffrey bellowed.

'My love, you cannot –' Margaery began.

'Did you just say I _cannot_?' Joffrey shrieked.

'I am touched by your grief, Your Grace,' Lord Roose calmly ventured, 'but there is no evidence that this man –'

'Ramsay told me that this son of a whore had designs on his life; he told me so himself, _me_, the KING!' Joffrey screamed.

'You can call yourself Emperor of the Fucking Universe, it won't change the fact that I didn't touch the bastard,' Yellow Dick unhelpfully interjected, 'wish I had, though. He used me bad.'

'Hold your tongue, idiot!' Lord Roose snapped, _I need milk of the poppy_

'Is there treason in this house that you can protect such a man as this?' Margaery demanded.

'I WANT HIM EXECUTED!' Joffrey screamed, _I need milk of the poppy_

'Your Grace,' Lord Roose continued to protest, 'as Lord of the Dreadfort, I must be allowed a certain – '

'You may be the Lord of the Dreadfort, but I am the KING!' Joffrey bawled, _I NEED MILK OF THE POPPY_

And Margaery was trying to calm Joffrey, and Joffrey was striking her across the face and crying as she crumpled to the floor, and Arya's head was beginning to spin, with the cold beneath her feet, with the sounds of her past and her horror, with Ramsay as he lay dead, with _too lucky, too lucky by far, Lord Roose knows, he suspects, I need milk of the poppy, I need it_, and worst of all her head spun with Jaime; with his infernal fucking gaze, with his near-death and near-life, with the words that he had murmured to Ramsay as he plunged his sword into his chest: 'This is for her.'

_He did it for me._

'Mother?'

_He's too late._

'Mother?'

_Too late._

'Mother?'

Arya looked slowly downwards. Lucion was there. The colour was draining from his face as he looked at his father, dead.

'I told you to stay in your chambers!' Arya despairingly snapped.

'Why has Father turned red?' Lucion managed to ask, before falling to the floor in a dead faint.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter notes

Today is my birthday. Here is a present for you!

* * *

They went straight from the 'trial,' to the hanging, to the interment. Was that the way they did things in the North? Jaime watched the lid close on Ramsay Bolton's sarcophagus, remembered Yellow Dick's strangled yell as he dropped into the empty air with a rope around his neck, and decided that he did not want to know.

The worst thing of all was how none of it made him feel better. He had imagined that it would; knowing that he had murdered Arya's tormentor; knowing that she knew that it was him, and that he had done it for her. But all that he saw, all that he felt each time he beheld her or thought of her, was his own shame a thousand fold; her screams as they dragged her into the carriage and chained her up; her silent screams across the years that were the fault of his own excuses: people finding out, her finding out, _Cersei _finding out, and realising that he didn't love her anymore; that he hadn't for a good long while…

Cersei stood opposite him at the interment, with Margaery and Arya and Lady Walda and all of their ladies. Her golden hair hung undressed about her shoulders in a gesture of mourning, but her breasts peeped almost impertinently from the bodice of her black gown; her beauty almost defiant; and suddenly he wanted to embrace her, if only out of a desire to be embraced in return.

The boy Lucion had insisted on standing next to his mother despite Lord Roose's command that he follow tradition and stand with the men. Just before the interment, when the entire household had been assembling in the crypt and awaiting the arrival of their liege lord and their unaccountably-sobbing king, it had been Lucion himself who had marched up to Jaime and told him this; bobbing up and down like an eager child begging for a sweet.

'I won't do it!' Lucion had declared, 'I've said I'll stand with my mother, and that is what I'll do!'

For a moment, Jaime had been so flabbergasted at the child's speaking to him that he hadn't known what to say.

He had settled on a hearty-sounding declaration of 'good lad,' and on mussing the boy's hair in a gesture of imagined camaraderie; his heart choking on itself as he realised that the thick mop of black hair between his fingers felt the same, to the touch, as Arya's did.

'Thank you, Ser Rickard,' Lucion had squeaked, his pale face flushing with pleasure at Jaime's approval, and –

'Lucion!' Arya had barked, 'come here!' –

And the boy had scurried off before Jaime could tell him his real name.

The interment itself had been a sombre, mostly-silent affair. Joffrey had stood tearful, red-eyed and rather quiet in comparison to his earlier bawling (_he can't have met Ramsay before – could he?_). The king's appearance was in stark contrast to Arya's, who was deathly pale and dry-eyed; her son's hand in hers as a thousand conflicting emotions, including grief, flickered across her face: grief, and a total incomprehension of why she was feeling it. And Jaime thought back to the day that they had arrived at the Dreadfort; when she had ridden into the yard, cruel and indifferent, with a struggling child tied to her saddle; a child whose bonds she had cut, and whom she had watched fall into the mud as though he were a sack of potatoes rather than a human being.

_Perhaps my initial instincts were right. Perhaps she is more like Ramsay now._

He pushed the thought away, felt ashamed and looked at her without wanting to.

Arya kept her eyes fixed firmly on the ground as the interment continued; her pale grey irises flickering constantly to the corners of her eyes as she felt Jaime's gaze boring into her, and when he finally looked away from her towards Cersei, he found his twin watching him with hard green eyes, as intently as he had been watching the girl from the North that he should have saved.

Then suddenly, the crypt was empty, and he was standing in the darkness with Arya, who was glaring at him from the other side of Ramsay's sarcophagus.

His abstraction alarmed him.

_Did I really just fail to notice the departure of every person here?_

Arya, however, gave him no time to consider the question.

'Don't talk to my son,' she snapped at him.

Jaime stared at her.

'He was talking to me!' he protested.

'_Stay away from him_,' Arya growled.

'Stay _away _from him?' Jaime chuckled, 'I doubt I could be anything but a _spectacular_ influence on him, judging by what I've seen so far.'

'And what _have_ you seen _so far_?' she spat.

_You. You. Nothing but you._

'Get any of my letters?' he quipped instead.

'You wrote me letters, did you?' Arya asked; as though she didn't care a fuck if he had.

'I did,' Jaime told her in a similar tone, 'though now that I've discovered your predilection for torturing children, I'm beginning to be sorry I bothered.'

She looked blankly at him. That made him angry.

'That little boy, Arya,' Jaime darkly insisted, 'the one that was tied to your saddle when I arrived. The one that fell off your horse into the mud.'

'Oh, him,' Arya indifferently recalled, 'he's alive. His mother and I have discussed it at length. She understands that it was for the best –'

'For the _best_?'

'– though he'll probably never use his right leg again. One of the hounds got hold of it and wouldn't –

'He's a child, Arya!

'I know he's a child.'

She spoke that last sentence with a degree of tenderness and soft-hearted shock that made him want to stop, but he plunged on anyway; uncaring of her feelings, and knowing that he would hate himself for it later.

'What did he do to deserve what you did to him?' Jaime demanded.

'Nothing at all,' Arya nonchalantly replied.

'Apparently 'nothing' wasn't enough to stop you slinging him over your saddle like a side of beef,' Jaime plunged on.

'It was the best place for him,' Arya shrugged.

'And what gave _you_ the right to judge?' Jaime insisted.

'Fuck you,' Arya spat.

'I know our lives are shaped by the people we live with,' Jaime coldly laughed, 'but gods, if I had known that you were going to be so devoted to Ramsay that you'd even go as far as torturing people for him –'

'Shut up.'

'– it almost makes me feel better about shoving Bran from that tower. If you're crippling children yourself, then you're in no position to judge me, are you?'

She struck him hard across the face; her palm making a loud, cracking noise in the darkness as it connected with his cheek. Her face was red as blood, and she was breathing heavily; as though making a concerted effort to stop herself from attacking him further; and his blood was beginning to sear and boil just like it had in the old days; only guilt was making it boil harder; made him think what he didn't believe and say what he didn't mean, to _her_, of all people, to the one person that he….

And he remembered some of the letters that he had written her; the ones that were full of hate and hurt and lies; the ones that he had written to provoke her into writing back, and that he had imagined her shattering over, like glass, as she read every poisonous word without writing back.

He remembered some of the others that he had written to her, and in a way, he was glad that she had never received them.

Arya was taking several deep breaths, then stepping away from him and putting her hands behind her back.

'Ramsay had a terrible memory for faces,' she calmly said, 'he had forgotten the boy's existence within hours.'

'Leaving the child to live out the rest of his days as a broken, traumatised cripple?' Jaime mocked.

'Leaving him alive,' Arya murmured.

Something changed, then: something in her voice and face; as if anger and vulnerability had suddenly become the same thing; as though iron had been born with silk at its heart. And he saw her as she had been before she came here. He saw her as she was: a young woman pretending in order to survive; pretending and hurting because of him; but at her core, remaining unchanged. Guilt flooded him anew: guilt at what he had done, and guilt at what he had assumed; guilt at how he claimed to know everything, when in fact he knew nothing at all, when his one true talent was seeing the worst in people, even if it didn't exist.

Arya was looking at him with something like fear; fear that grew as she watched him watch her, and she was stripped even though she was clothed, and deep within him, he felt his own walls crumbling to dust.

'Arya –'

'Don't go near my son again,' she told him, and left him with the stones and the dead.


	11. Chapter 11

**From Lord Varys, Master of Whisperers, at King's Landing, to King Joffrey Baratheon, at the Dreadfort.**

Your Grace

While Lord Roose's 'setting aside' the Lady Walda in favour of his good-daughter the Lady Arya would certainly be practical in terms of Lord Roose's further binding his last living heir to him, Your Grace should consider to whom such a bond would be most beneficial: to Lord Roose, or to the realm.

Your Grace should consider that the plot with which Lord Roose proved himself to be most loyal to Your Grace was also, by its very nature, a revelation of that lord's characteristic inconsistency and lust for power. His Wardenship of the North, and his consequent revival of ancient practices repugnant to the laws of Westeros, have also proved Lord Roose's hunger for power to be infinitely greater than his talent at maintaining it. I have consulted with Lord Baelish, who has assured me that Northern expenditure now accounts for almost one quarter of the realm's; a sum that has tripled since the days of the traitor Ned Stark. Lord Baelish further advises me that such reckless dispensing of funds in the North may, in the long term, result in all of Westeros' being obliged to enter a period of austerity in which feasting, hunting and celebrations of any sort may have to be temporarily suspended in order to save the realm from bankruptcy. Your Grace should also consider the possibility that Your Grace's lord uncle Tyrion may not long continue to put funds at our disposal if we continue to hand them over to a man so inept at managing them; a possibility that would put us firmly in the debt (and at the mercy) of the Iron Bank of Braavos; an institution that will not hesitate to fund the various causes of Your Grace's enemies, merely in the name of getting their gold back.

The careful weighing of these facts by Your Grace, together with the blessing of Your Grace's reign by the gods, will no doubt guide Your Grace in deciding whether or not the maintenance of Northern loyalty, the preservation of Westerosi financial stability, or the custody and education of the Lord Lucion, the future Lord of Winterfell, should be left in the hands of a man of such dubious loyalty and talent for command; a state-of-affairs which would be the inevitable consequence of a marriage between the Lord Roose and his good-daughter, the Lady Arya.

Your Grace may, of course, simply exercise Your Grace's royal prerogative and consent to a match on the condition that the Lord Lucion be fostered in the South until he comes of age. This solution does not, however, consider the possibility of a tragic accident's befalling either the boy, or his aunt the Lady Sansa before she produces children; in which case the Lady Arya, as the last Stark and therefore the last individual capable of ensuring the good behaviour of Stark loyalists and Northern secessionists, would be left once more in Bolton hands and under Bolton control. A Southern match for the lady would, however, keep her and her son firmly under Your Grace's control, and would, along with Your Grace's magnanimous influence, prevent some of the mother's restless and indecorous spirit from passing to the son before he becomes Lord of Winterfell; a position of immense influence in the maintenance of Northern loyalty.

I join with all of Westeros in praying for Your Grace's speedy recovery, and remain Your Grace's obedient servant

Varys


	12. Chapter 12

'My lord!' the servant shouted, 'they've found her!'

Jaime left his horse standing awkwardly in the middle of the training yard and rushed down to the forecourt; his footsteps joining with those of the countless others who were heading in the same direction.

The day before yesterday, Joffrey, still stricken with grief, had given Lord Roose permission to kill Lady Walda and marry Arya as soon as the mourning rites were over. _Yesterday_, Joffrey had changed his mind; gleefully informing the latter young lady that she was once again a ward of the Crown and would be forced to marry a Southern lord of the King's own choosing. And _today_, it had been discovered that Arya and her son were not in their beds, and had run off during the night without attracting the attention of a single guard or watchman.

Joffrey had screamed his head off at the injustice of it and had slumped back into bed, exhausted; search parties had been deployed across all lands surrounding the Dreadfort; and Jaime had prayed as he had never prayed before: that she wouldn't be caught; that she'd slip through their lines; that she'd get to White Harbour, and then the Free Cities, and live there, happy, with her son. Even though her chances would have been far greater had she chosen to run alone. Even though taking a five-year-old child with her could serve no purpose other than getting caught.

_She should have thought of that before taking the risk. She should have come to me._

_Lannister. Would _you _come to you?_

Even so, he had prayed for her. He had gone to the sept, lit a candle, bent his knees and prayed. He had bribed a servant to inform him the moment the search party found her. And he had hoped, with a desperation so sleepless it ached, that the bribe would prove unnecessary and that she would at last be free.

Sleep had eluded Jaime entirely since the day of the interment. Even now, he could feel it calling to him; and even now, it wouldn't come. All that came to him was her face; her face as they had stood together in the crypt; as he had spoken evil to her; as he had bastardised himself and what he had felt; as he had bastardised her.

What the fuck had possessed him to compare her to Ramsay? To compare her to _himself?_ To even _mention_ her brother; the intruding little shit whose face had somehow – in the years that she had grown from girl to woman – faded and vanished for both of them; obliterated by the poison of trust. And then… in the darkness of the years afterwards…for him, Brandon Stark had faded to little more than a memory. A drop in the ocean compared to what he had done later.

Jaime entered the forecourt and perceived Lucion on the far side: grey as ash and being helped down from a horse by his septa. His leg was broken, and tears were leaking from his eyes as he struggled to bite back groans of pain. Arya had dismounted, and was trying to go to him, but was abruptly yanked by the ends of her chains into the centre of a group of Bastard's Boys, who seemed to take great pleasure in laughing themselves hoarse at her increasingly frantic attempts to get away from them.

The harder she fought, the closer they moved, like vultures converging on a fallen wolf: shoving her from man to man; tripping her up with her tangled chains; and taking turns at seeing who could grope her arse the quickest. And Jaime's feet were beginning to move, and his hand to move rapidly to his sword; and Lucion, realising that his mother was in danger, was starting to scream death threats and to cry out for help from anyone who would listen. And the Bastard's Boys were laughing at him; imitating his cries and threatening to break his other leg if he didn't shut up; and Arya was lunging at the man nearest to her and kneeing him in the groin in a final, desperate attempt to get to her son; and the remaining men were pulling on her chains like boys playing at tug-of-war; shouting to each other and laughing uproariously as the momentum sent her sprawling to the ground with barely enough strength to resist as one of their number stepped up to her and began to grind the heel of his boot into her face.

Jaime could feel the world turning red around him; a rush of crimson and scarlet and black. His blood was blinding him, then bringing him back; bringing the world back, clearer and ghastlier. Lucion was being bundled away from the scene and screaming his heart out; Arya was scratching, biting and weakening in the mud as she was beaten, held down, fondled and humiliated; and all of it was done out in the open, in broad daylight, as though hurting her were a thing so normal as to be almost banal.

The sound of the first man dying was better than sex.

Jaime ripped his sword from the man's stomach and let his blood sing to him as the rest attacked; as one of them lost a leg, as another lost a head, as another fell to his knees with a bloody mess where his cock used to be; and it didn't matter how many there were, or how strong or weak their weapons were; he was taking two, three, four of them at once, and colouring all of them red, and in his mind they all had the same face – his own – just as it had been five years ago when he had watched and done nothing.

His sword was dripping blood and the scene was dripping people; people who were fading away into the corners of his vision with only their backs and their fleeing, screaming footsteps; and he was kneeling in the mud next to Arya with the blood fury still in him and saying something to her; something he couldn't hear as he grasped her shoulders and tried to pull her into a sitting position. She groaned in pain.

The sound of her voice sent his bloodlust tearing out of him. His humanity rushed in to fill the void, and he loosened his grip on her shoulders, which he now noticed was firm enough to bruise her skin. Arya's fingers, however, remained tightly clutching at his forearms, and she allowed herself to be pulled slowly upwards until she was facing him.

Jaime felt his fingers brush away the mud that caked her face and dab tenderly at the skin beneath her eyes, which were hooded and opening and bloodshot and desperate. She looked at him; her grey eyes searching his. Then very slowly, she leaned towards him and rested her head on his shoulder. It was a small gesture, like a child's, and his heart shattered as he realised that the only reason she wasn't screaming at him to leave her be and not to touch her was that she had no one else. She was alone – alone enough to cling to the person that he had been, and to ignore who he was, even if it was only for a few seconds.

'Help us,' Arya half-murmured, half-sobbed against his Kingsguard whites.

He was shocked by how light her body felt against his; as though she were made of nothing but bone; as though a single touch would crush her. But then, she had always been small. Even that day in the boat, he had felt her ribs pressing hard against his stomach through the fabric of her shift. Even as her hands had tangled in his hair. Even as her lips had softly brushed his. Awakening him. Terrifying him.

A shadow appeared across the place where they sat. Jaime looked up into the dark. And he realised that his arms were wound tightly around Arya's shoulders and that her own were clutched around his waist, and that Cersei was looking down at him in disapproval; her green eyes flashing as she surveyed the corpses; her beautiful mouth curling into a sneer.

'Bring her inside,' Cersei said, 'before you make a bigger fool of yourself.'


	13. Chapter 13

Cersei remained dimly aware that her son was still speaking to her. She could hear the sound of his voice emanating from the pile of blankets and pillows that had been his sickbed since the Bastard of Bolton's murder. She could hear the sound intensifying from a shout to a screech as Joffrey realised her abstraction. But she couldn't pull back to him; couldn't come away from where her mind was taking her, because twenty seconds ago, Joffrey had remarked, 'I think I'll marry the little Stark bitch to Uncle Jaime,' and a warhammer had seemed to swing from nowhere and strike her in the chest. And her breath had been crushed from her lungs like blood from a wound, and memory had filled her heart and mind like poison; _one_ memory that seemed far more familiar than it should have been, as though she had been foreseeing it all her life.

It was the memory of Jaime's face at the interment; his face among the stones and the dead; his eyes fixed intently on the Stark girl; his eyes calling her preposterous grey wolf ones up to his like a siren song; not as if he wanted to take her for a paramour or a whore, but as if he wanted to take her in his arms and hold her while she wept. There had been a gentleness in his expression rendered all the more terrible by the thing that had accompanied it: a dark sorrow that had clung to him like a silent form of torture, and a deep guilt (though she couldn't imagine what for) that had seemed to crush him where he stood. It had given him an air of self-pity that had made her want to hit him till he bled, and now, as she remembered it, she realised that what she had seen in her brother that day had not been pity, or compassion, or infatuation, or even lust, but love; the worst kind of love; love as it was in the songs; so pure, so passionate and so utterly hopeless that no amount of fucking could ever truly consummate it.

Jaime was in love with her. He was in love with that dirty, doe-eyed, foul-mouthed little animal, and probably had been for years; and Cersei hadn't seen it; had _refused_ to see it in – oh gods, in _everything, in all of it, in every day, in every - _

…in the way that melancholy had suddenly and without warning enveloped her brother and taken him away from her; in the way that circles had appeared under his eyes and silence had taken the place of his speech; in the way that he had come to her bed for the past five years: rarely, and even then as if he didn't need her at all, only the comfort of her flesh.

Had he been thinking of… _her _during those times? Had he been imagining that scrawny, uncouth _child _in her place?

_I am a lioness, _Cersei proudly thought, _no one can take away what is already mine._

Joffrey's lips were still moving, and his face growing redder and redder, and Cersei fought the unladylike urge to drive her fist into the wall as she searched herself for every sign, every possibility, every _thing_ that she had not seen; every _thing _that might have told her earlier. And as the sodden cloth began to slip off Joffrey's forehead and his fingers to fist in the sheets, she remembered a time – only moments after she had lost Myrcella – when the rabble had tried to tear her and Joffrey to shreds, and half the city had descended into a state of anarchy, and Jaime, instead of staying at the Red Keep, _with her_, had risked his own life to save that little _animal_ from the mob; a girl of one or two-and-ten that he didn't even know.

He had brought Arya Stark back to the Keep clutched in his arms like some breakable thing: snapping at everyone who tried to take the girl off his hands; going with her to the infirmary and staying with her when it hadn't been necessary; and enquiring for days afterwards – in an avuncular fashion that Cersei had found funny at the time – how the girl did, and whether or not she had bad dreams.

'She killed a man, Cersei,' Jaime had gravely answered when she had asked him why.

'What of it?' Cersei had replied.

Her brother had looked at her, then, with something like sadness on his face.

'The first time changes you,' he had replied.

And Cersei had imagined that this was one of those things – those male, warrior, blood things – that she treasured in him, but that she could never fully understand; and she had never thought of the incident again.

It all made sense now, of course. Nothing makes a woman more eager to fall into bed with a man than his saving her from a crowd of raving commoners and pretending to give a fuck about her afterwards. She had had no idea that Jaime was capable of liking them so young either, but then she had never imagined him to be capable of loving another person: apart from herself, of course.

Had he already fucked the girl once before? It might make things more difficult if he had.

Then suddenly, she wanted to laugh, and she berated herself for even considering the question.

_I am a lioness_, she thought,_ nobody can take away what is already mine._

'I cannot think the match a good idea,' Cersei said; biting back everything that she could not say to her son.

'_Why_ can you not?' Joffrey snapped; as though he didn't care a fuck either way.

'It's what he wants,' Cersei said; pretending to give a carefully-considered reply.

Joffrey was not convinced.

'_So?_' he growled, 'who _cares_ if it's what he wants? It isn't what _she _wants. That's all that matters. I can imagine no worse fate for the little bitch. Apart from the one she's already had, of course.'

Cersei cocked an eyebrow at her son.

'I had no idea you thought so badly of your Uncle Jaime,' she observed; an iron knot forming in her stomach.

'He defies me,' Joffrey snarled; 'he's always forgetting that I'm the King. _Always_. He's worse than Uncle Tyrion ever was.'

'So why not marry the girl to Uncle Tyrion?'

'Because Uncle Jaime is worse than Uncle Tyrion, ARE YOU FUCKING DEAF?'

The iron knot in Cersei's stomach and the bone whiteness of her knuckles were fast transforming into the desire to walk across the room and hit her son around the face. But whatever that little Tyrell whore chose to call herself, Cersei Lannister was a queen, and would always behave as such; even if the king himself had no such scruples.

'You should think carefully about losing the Lord Commander of your Kingsguard simply to prove that your word is law,' Cersei continued; as if Joffrey had not shouted at all.

'My word _is _law!' Joffrey snapped.

'Whatever impertinences your Uncle Jaime has committed, he is a fine warrior,' Cersei persisted, 'there are not many others who can replace him.'

'I may appoint one of the Kettlebacks,' Joffrey replied; beginning to tremble with fever, 'it might be pleasant to have somebody who _smiles, _for a change.'


	14. Chapter 14

'No!' Arya shouted; trying to slam the door in Jaime's face.

Jaime stuck his foot into the gap and pushed his way into the room. She rounded on him.

'Get out!' she screeched.

'Just _listen_!' he shouted back.

'NO!' Arya bellowed; seizing hold of his lapels and shoving him towards the door again.

'_LISTEN TO ME!_'Jaime roared at her.

'Get out before I call a guard!' Arya screamed.

That made Jaime smirk, in spite of himself.

'Go on,' he told her, 'call for him.'

There was silence. Arya's beautiful beautiful agony of a face transformed in front of him; marked by a conflicting desire to scream and to escape as she released him, shoved him roughly away from her and stalked back to her bed, which was strewn with the contents of a half-unpacked wardrobe.

She was unsteady on her feet; as though she had had too much to drink. She used one hand to take sips of an almost-empty bottle of milk of the poppy, and the other to unceremoniously throw dresses, shifts, shoes and headdresses back into the cupboard unfolded. As she worked, she remained silent and ignored Jaime so completely that for a time, he thought she had forgotten his presence.

He looked at her.

The bruises on her face were beginning to heal, but still coloured her skin black and blue; her hair was a tangled mass of darkness that swayed with every movement of her body; and at her wrists, unconcealed by her rolled-up sleeves, were the red ring scars from the chains that she still seemed to wear.

'No amount of staring will make me marry you,' Arya suddenly and calmly said; her voice like that of a woman three times her age, 'not you, not anyone. So go back to your son and tell him that your plan didn't work.'

Her horribly-justified distrust pierced him like a dagger to the throat.

'You think I _planned _this?' Jaime demanded.

'You sure as hell wouldn't be obeying the little shit if you hadn't,' Arya replied; refusing to meet his eyes as she continued to toss clothing back into the wardrobe; as he stood rooted to the spot, flabbergasted, and dying: dying from the truth.

Arya seemed to find that delightful.

'_Oh_,' she drawled; her expression spiteful and triumphant, 'have I hurt the poor Kingslayer's feelings?'

Hearing the word on her lips was somehow worse than anything else she could have said, because she was the only one who knew; the only one that he had ever told about Aerys and his kingdom of ashes; the only one that he had trusted enough to tell; and for a moment he wondered where his smart mouth had disappeared to as each barbed, individual syllable pushed him further into the darkness of guilt.

'You've never called me Kingslayer before,' he murmured; cursing at how soft his fucking voice sounded, and when she did not reply, he allowed himself to believe that she hadn't heard him at all.

There was complete silence in the room, broken only by the rustle of clothing as Arya flung each individual article away from her. And suddenly, as if for the first time, Jaime realised what she was doing.

His smart mouth returned in an instant.

'Why are you repacking your wardrobe?' Jaime scoffed, 'trying to identify changes in fashion?'

'Fuck off,' Arya spat; the venom in her voice telling him that she had been aware of his presence all this time.

'Counting your dresses?' Jaime continued, 'cataloguing how much velvet you have left?'

'Only if velvet's good for strangling you to death,' she hissed in reply.

'Running away again?' he proposed; as though nothing could be duller.

Arya's head snapped upwards, her eyes widened in horror and the colour drained so quickly from her face that Jaime quickly took an involuntary step towards her; fearing that she might faint.

'Who told you that?' she demanded; hysteria colouring her voice.

He stared at her.

'Nobody told me –'

'Did Ramsay tell you that?'

'What?'

'Where is he?'

And before he could ask her what the fuck she was talking about, she was striding frantically across the room and ripping open every set of curtains that she could find; as though she expected to find Ramsay hiding behind it.

Jaime felt his heart shatter in his chest.

'Arya, he isn't –'

'Where is he?'

'Arya –'

'WHERE IS HE?'

And she began to tear the curtains off their railings and throw herself from window to window like a caged animal crying 'where is he? Where is he? WHERE IS HE?' and Jaime was striding across the room towards her; afraid that she might hurt herself, and -

'Where is he?' Arya shouted; beginning to throw the windows open.

'Arya –'

'Where is he?'

'ARYA!'

'WHERE IS HE?'

Jaime seized both her arms and held her fast, so that she faced him.

'_He's dead, Arya_. We killed him.'

She froze, and stared at him for a moment; as though unaware of his identity.

Then the return of her memory was almost visible; a storm in her grey eyes as she realised where she was, when she was and who he was. Her expression hardened immediately.

'Take your hands off me,' Arya softly said.

Jaime hesitated.

'_Take your hands off me_,' she growled.

He released her. She tottered away across the room, reclaimed her bottle of milk of the poppy and drank deeply. When she finished, and looked at him again, she blinked; as though surprised he was still there.

'I would marry… _anyone_…if it meant that I didn't have to marry you,' she said, softly, but clearly, 'now please go.'

He wanted to respond with similar courtesy; with softness; with restraint. Instead, he found himself shouting at her as he would have done years ago, in the course of one of their stupid arguments about dragons or direwolves.

'And what happens when you marry someone else?' Jaime bellowed, 'when Joffrey marries you off to some plump little lord who'll force you to walk around in a dress all day and never let you fight, or ride? How should you like all that needlework, Lady Bolton? Does the prospect please you?'

'Better than being chained to scum like you for the rest of my life,' Arya growled.

'You'll be chained to far worse if you run, and you're caught,' Jaime scoffed, 'besides, you've already tried it once – wasn't much of a success, was it?'

'Get out!' Arya shouted.

'What will you do when Lucion comes back with a broken neck instead of a broken leg?'

'That will never happen; I'll protect him!'

'Not by running, you won't!'

'He'll be far safer on the run than he will be with _you_ as a stepfather!'

'And why is that? The only obstinate child I want to throw out of a window right now is you!'

'Is that your idea of a joke?'

'Growing up a fugitive is no bloody way to raise a child!'

'Don't pretend that you give a fuck about my son!'

'I don't give a fuck about your son. But I know that you do.'

She stared at him for a moment; as though his face were a lock on a prison door.

She recovered quickly.

'I'm a widow now,' Arya stubbornly declared, 'I only have to listen to what _I _have to say, and I say that I will never marry again!'

'You'll never marry _again?_' Jaime repeated in disbelief, 'are you _dreaming_, child? Do you think you have a _choice_? Do you think you have an _option_ what happens to you? Your son is the only male heir to the North! If he dies, if Sansa dies –'

'Shut up!' she bellowed.

'– then it's _you_!' Jaime insisted, 'do you think they'll ever allow you out of their sight again? Do you think they'll let you go? If you run, they will hunt you down to the ends of the earth and drag you back here in chains to be wed to whichever obsequious bastard Joffrey chooses!'

'It will never happen; things will be different this time!'

'You don't believe that yourself!'

'I _know_ that myself!'

'Will you stop being so bloody stubborn and let me help you?'

'Is that what you call it? Is that what you'll call it during the bedding, when you're holding me down and sticking your cock in me while I close my eyes and beg you to stop?'

'You really believe me capable of that?'

'Can you blame me?'

'Arya, please –'

'I don't know why you're even bothering with _marriage_, anyway. You're bigger than me, you're stronger, and on top of everything you're the fucking Kingslayer; if you want to fuck me; do it now, get it over with, stop talking about my son and _get out of my fucking room_!'

'Stop _talking_ this way!'

'What way? Do you think I'm blind? Do you think I haven't seen the way you look at me with your stupid Lannister eyes; as though I were some poor shattered princess that needs some knight with a stupid name to ride in at the gate and save her? Do you think I haven't seen you fucking me with your stupid eyes?'

'Do you think I haven't seen you fucking me with yours?'

That shut her up with impressive rapidity, and for a moment Jaime was rather pleased with himself as her face, neck, hands and every inch of exposed skin turned a bright shade of red. Then she started to cry.

She made a valiant effort to strangle her own sobs and disregard her streaming eyes, and she once again uncorked her bottle of milk of the poppy and drank until there was nothing left; ignoring Jaime completely he approached and stood before her with his hands and arms twitching; not daring to touch her; dying to touch her.

And it hit him again. It killed him again. His own cowardice. His own lie.

_I did this. Me._

'Arya –' Jaime murmured.

'Stay _away_,' she choked; refusing to meet his eyes.

'When I say marry me –'

'I will _never_ marry you,'

'I mean in name only.'

Arya's eyes locked onto his at once; bloodshot and exhausted, but alert.

'What do you mean?' she demanded.

_She's listening. Thank the gods, she's listening, she's listening – _

'You don't have to see me,' Jaime declared in a rush, 'you don't have to fuck me. You don't even have to live in the same house as me. Just marry me, take your son and go where you choose. They'll let you, if you have a husband. Just go. Live. Be free.'

As he finished, she stared at him with undisguised astonishment; her mouth hanging open and her grey eyes large and brilliant. Her gaze made him profoundly uncomfortable: intent, penetrating and deeply suspicious; as though she were seeing something good that she did not dare acknowledge. He watched her fight with herself, and with everything that he had once condemned her to; with her love for her son, and with her knowledge that though Jaime was wrong about most things, he was right about the fact that they would never let her go.

She looked away from him.

'I'd…I'd be under your protection.'

'Don't think of it that way.'

'But it is that way.'

She still didn't look at him. The fingers of her right hand were rubbing at her left wrist, and for one dizzying, mad and utterly irrational moment, he wanted to reach his hand out to hers and brush the scarred flesh with his lips, as if that would somehow make everything better.

'Just think of it,' Jaime drawled, in a confident voice that made him cringe, 'you would have all the benefits of being married to a son of Tywin Lannister without ever having to see him. Most women would kill just for the chance.'

The embers in Arya's eyes became raging fires as she glared at him, and he cursed himself for the second time that morning.

'What if I ask to be sent to the Free Cities?' she coldly asked.

He almost doubled up at the thought. His body's reaction was enough to make him sick. Everything in him revolted against it; made his blood pound harder and his heart maim quicker and bile rise in his throat so that he wanted to gag on it.

_What did you think, you imbecilic little cunt?_ he told himself, _that she would actually want to stay with you?_

And yet, when Ramsay's dagger had pierced his back and sent the poison into his veins, she had saved him. She hadn't let him die. And she certainly wasn't the type to go out of her way to save an enemy.

He owed her everything and anything that she wanted. If she wanted to be sent to the Free Cities –

'I would let you go,' he softly replied; trying to pour every inch of honesty that he had ever possessed into those five syllables; into all of his body; into all of his eyes as he looked at her; so that she would see and feel and remember the person that he had been; the person she had trusted; so that she would know, just by the sound of his voice, that he would never betray her again; that he would spend the rest of his life trying to atone for what he had done, even if he knew – now, today – that a thousand lifetimes would never be enough.

She was crying openly now. She wasn't even fighting her tears. He was close enough to her to see the sheen of tears change the colour of her skin; to feel her eyes rip his heart out; to taste her breath on his face. He remembered her earlier that week; her thin arms clutched about his neck and her head nestling childlike in the crook of his shoulder as she saw, as she remembered, what she had felt for him before and what she had once known: that with him, she would always be safe. He could see that in her now. And she could see it in him.

He was very close to her now. The heat of her body was intoxicating, even though he was not touching her, and Jaime rapidly shoved the thought away from him and moved towards the door. She deserved more from him than lust.

On the threshold, he paused.

'Years ago,' he said, 'I betrayed you when I should have protected you. I abandoned you. I am responsible for everything that Ramsay has done to you.'

'Yes,' Arya snapped; her tongue returning in a flash; 'you are.'

He closed his eyes as the pain of the truth shattered him once more. When he opened them again, she was still there.

'I will not ask for your forgiveness,' Jaime said, 'I do not deserve it. But let me do this for you. I failed to help you before. Let me help you now.'

He looked at her for one moment more, then moved to go. The door was right in front of him. He put out a hand to open it.

'Would it be in the betrothal agreement?' Arya's voice asked, 'the part where you said you would let me go?'

Jaime turned slowly, disbelievingly, to face her. She was looking at him with the utmost concentration; as though trying to determine whether or not he was lying.

'Would it?' she insisted.

'Yes,' Jaime replied.

'Would I get to keep my son?' Arya asked, 'you wouldn't send him off to foster somewhere and forget about him? You'd provide for him if I died? You wouldn't send him back here?'

'No,' Jaime replied.

'Would _that_ be in the betrothal agreement?' Arya asked.

'Yes,' Jaime replied.

She said nothing else.

Jaime turned to leave.

'I'll leave you to consider –'

'I don't need to consider.'

Jaime's heart sank.

'If it will not be you, it will be someone else,' Arya said, 'I would far rather it were you.'

He looked at her.

She was hugging herself. Her eyes were clouding over. And though she was alive, she looked dead.

'Now get out,' she said.

* * *

Chapter notes

Some readers may feel that it is not in Arya's character to acquiesce so quickly. My response: NOT EVEN SORRY!


	15. Fragments (all unsent)

**Fragments (all unsent)**

**From the Lady Arya Stark, at the Dreadfort, to Ser Jaime Lannister, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, at King's Landing **

Jaime

Fuck you. Fuck you and your unfeeling, condescending, childish little letter and fuck the unfeeling, condescending, childish little apology you sent afterwards. All this time, and I've never written back to you. Not once. _Why won't you leave me alone?_ Haven't you got the fucking message yet?

I don't want your letters. I don't want the paper you use to write them. I don't want your words. I don't want the ink you use to shape them.

I don't want to know that you're _thinking _about the Red Wedding. I don't want to know that you're _thinking_ about _me_. What fucking use is _any _of that to me?

I don't want your letters. I don't want your words. I don't want _you_.

I want

* * *

**From the Lady Arya Stark, at the Dreadfort, to Ser Jaime Lannister, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, at King's Landing **

Jaime

I think I may have loved you once. That day in the boat I definitely did, even though I was five-and-ten and stupid. Not knowing what you would do. What you wouldn't.

I have scarring on my wrists and ankles from the chains. When the chains first came off, and I saw the scars, they made me think of that one time when you showed me the scar you got fighting the Smiling Knight, so I smiled. I could see Ramsay watching me. He thought I had become him.

In the beginning, I used to dream that you would come for me. It's so unlike me, to dream like that; so strange for me, to dream of being saved by someone else. But the strangest thing of all is that before _that_ moment – the moment when they dragged me out into the yard to be chained into the carriage – I hadn't expected help from you, or wanted it. I told myself that I would run away, or fight, or kill them all in their sleep. Then they yanked me out into the sunlight and held me down, and I realised that if my future husband had half the strength of the weakest of them, I would not be able to fight back.

You were there. I couldn't see you, but I knew that you were there. I felt you. And for a split second, I wasn't afraid, because I knew that you would butcher alive anybody who treated me like that.

Then they dragged me away and chained me up, and you stood there and did nothing.

I could feel the realisation doing something to a place beneath my skin; in the way that castles fall when miners have been digging during a siege and fucking up their walls. If I were like other women, I might say it was the feeling of my heart tearing in my chest, but it was worse than that. It was the feeling of me, breaking.

Jaime. What did I do to make you hate me so much?

* * *

**[End of Part 1]**


	16. Chapter 16

**Part 2: Casterly Rock**

'It won't work,' Arya had told him.

'If you don't trust me, will you at least trust Tyrion?' Jaime had snapped in reply, 'it was his idea.'

Arya had frowned stubbornly at him, and had refused to answer, though the fear of having her clothes torn off by a crowd of drunken strangers had continued to mark her bruised face like a scar. And yet on the wedding night at Casterly Rock, when Joffrey had had too much to drink and had passed out at the high table, Jaime had seen her smile weakly at Tyrion, and the sight had given him hope, even as Tyrion bowed to her from his seat and slapped the unconscious king's shoulder in a gesture of camaraderie.

'I will not allow the bedding of my lady wife,' Jaime had stiffly announced when the time had come, 'she is much too frail for such things.'

There had been grumbling, of course, from the drunker guests, and whispers of conspiracy from the soberer ones, but one look at the bruises on Arya's face and another at the unwavering resolve on Jaime's had made all thoughts of argument evaporate; so that while Jaime had been dragged out of the hall by a crowd of shrieking females, a group of guards had escorted Arya from it to make sure that she reached their designated chambers unmolested.

Jaime's heart was a dead weight in his chest as he pulled off his doublet and shirt, plonked them unceremoniously onto the recliner where he would sleep, and cast about for the apparently non-existent sleeping shift that was meant to have been left out for him.

Tonight, he and Arya would sleep in the same room, for the sake of appearances. Tomorrow, she and her son would leave for the Free Cities, and he would never see her again.

When he thought about it, he could find no words for the inside of himself. It was a kind of numbness so deep it hurt; a boiling, all-encompassing sadness far worse than anything he had experienced in the five years since he had betrayed her. The sea air was like daggers on his bare skin, daggers that hovered and daggers that cut, only to suddenly and inexplicably become softer and caressing; as though Arya had walked into the room silent as a wraith to brush her lips against the back of his neck; her tiny nose nestling into his hair, her arms winding around his waist and her hands resting open-palmed on his stomach; her body pressed against his back and her breath hot on his skin as her mouth moved down his spine.

He could feel her standing behind him.

Jaime jerked around with a surge of blood in his veins.

She stood silent in the doorway with half her face buried into the frame.

For a split second, she looked afraid; her grey eyes fixing on his naked torso as though it were a jar of wildfire. Her eyes burned upwards to his, every colour of their look an agony.

Then she straightened up and shouted at him.

'What the fuck are you doing?' she loudly demanded.

'I am getting dressed, young lady,' Jaime replied in as nonchalant a manner as he could muster.

'You look like you're getting _un_dressed,' she accused; cocking an eyebrow at him.

'My servant hasn't laid out clothes,' he scoffed, 'he probably imagined I wouldn't need any, the fool.'

'You need a _servant _to fetch you your clothes?' Arya scoffed back as she entered the room.

'We weren't allowed servants in the Kingsguard,' Jaime observed; turning to face her; 'so I rather like the idea of having –'

'Come near me and I'll chop your cock off!' Arya seethed; drawing two daggers and holding them protectively in front of her.

Jaime stared.

'Why in seven hells would I try anything when we've agreed not to fuck anyway?'

'Just stay away!'

Jaime was silent for a moment; his mind churning, then reeling as he considered the reasons why she might wear a pair of daggers to bed.

_She doesn't trust me, _he thought.

_Do you blame her?_ he thought again.

Jaime took three steps away from her. She did not lower her daggers.

'There's a screen there for you to change behind,' he said quietly, 'take the bed. I won't bother you.'

Arya stared suspiciously at him for a moment, before sheathing her daggers and beginning to cross the room.

'You'd better not,' she snapped.

* * *

Arya moved behind the screen, and breathed. With both her hands she smoothed perspiration from her forehead and hair and breathed steadily to slow the beating of her heart, which was thundering within her like a storm.

'It's just the shock,' she murmured to herself as her heart continued its forceful pounding, 'it's just the shock, that's all; just the preparing for a fight because I thought –'

'What?' Jaime unceremoniously shouted from somewhere in the room.

'I didn't say anything!' Arya shouted back, and began to unlace her gown with trembling fingers.

For the past week, she had been unable to think of anything but the first time Ramsay had… 'bedded'… her. That night had come to her constantly, unbidden, and in flashes of fear and horror: the smell of her own blood, the glint of steel on her throat, and Ramsay's skin cold and reptilian against hers as he broke her; fucking her as hard and as cruelly as though she were a well-used whore instead of a scrawny little girl with her virtue still clinging to her thighs, and her teeth drawing blood from her own lips to stop herself from crying.

She had told herself, each time one of these memories seized her, that Jaime would not do the same thing; that he was too ashamed, too afraid, and too fucking desperate for forgiveness to do so much as look at her inappropriately. But as the soldiers had escorted her from the hall and into the winding corridors of Casterly Rock, she had been gripped by a sudden, paralytic, uncontrollable fear that it had all been a lie; that she had been duped; that he would never let her go; that when they arrived at Jaime's chambers the guards would seize hold of her and pin her down and laugh and chant along as her new master fucked her and hurt her and laughed at her for being so fucking stupid.

And her steps had begun to falter as she had walked between the guards; she had begun to look frantically over both of her shoulders, left and right, to see if there were any possible means of escape; 'are you quite well, my lady?' the captain of the guard had asked kindly; and _stop being stupid, stop being afraid,_ she had growled to herself, _you've got two daggers with you, and you're much better at using them now than you were five years ago, don't stop, don't cry, think of Lucion, you have done this for Lucion, don't cry, DON'T_

The guards had left her alone at the door. She had stood there, trembling, and only her deepest sense of self-control had prevented her from bolting. She had gripped hold of both of her daggers, _you're not afraid, you're not, you're __**not, **_and with her heart in her throat and her teeth clenching together, she had opened the door and her fear had disappeared so quickly that she had almost choked on it.

Jaime had been standing with his back to her, his skin bare to the candlelight, looking out towards the sea, as though transfixed. And somehow he had seemed larger than the sea; larger even than the room in which they stood…

The light, dim as it was, had seemed to slide across his skin with a kind of hunger; its glow caressing every muscle and every scar; the shadows rippling across his golden skin like a stone across a pool; as if the sound of his voice when he had proposed their 'arrangement' to her had come suddenly alive in his flesh with how kind he had sounded; how sincere in his guilt; how much like the person that she had loved, once.

_The person who knew what Ramsay was and gave me to him anyway._

The realisation had provoked a wild, dizzying rush of blood to her head that had only made her feel fainter and sicker when Jaime had turned around to face her, and as she had sniped at him and been sniped at in return, her hatred of him had grown deep enough to be almost tangible, making perspiration wake up across her body and her heart beat so quickly that she feared she might swallow it.

_Tomorrow, we'll be gone_, she thought to herself, buckling her belt on over her sleeping shift, _hating someone is less complicated when you're thousands of miles away from them._

* * *

She dreamed. It was surprising to her, even in her sleep, because she never dreamed. You couldn't dream if you never slept.

She dreamed _about_ _that day_. It made her scream, in pain and horror, in her sleep and out of it, when she came _tearing_ out of it; her daggers swiping madly at the memory, the evil, the thin air that made her choke; that made her want to reverse the blades in her hands and end herself, end herself, end herself, if it would only stop thought, if it would only stop memory, if it would only stop –

She dropped one of the daggers, and searched, and couldn't find it _WHERE IS IT_ she'd have to use just the one, to _take me away, take Ramsay away, free Lucion, make him free, free him_, she gripped it to use it, to make Lucion free, to take herself away, to take Ramsay away; and then he was there, Jaime; knocking the blade from her hand and grasping the back of her neck with his hands and saying something to her; a wall of sound that she could only half-hear; something about it being just a dream, Arya.

She rasped something incomprehensible back at him, because it couldn't be true, she couldn't dream because she didn't sleep, not ever, not since she had been a little girl. And she could still feel the cold of the dream on her skin; the same cold that had struck her through to the bone in the second when she had entered the room, _on that day_, and seen Lucion, his trousers at his knees as he lay face-down on the bed, and Ramsay standing behind him, his fingers at his breeches, unlacing himself; _she was so cold, cold on the inside, cold inside herself, freezing to death when she had all the fires and all the furs she wanted._

Something crushed the cold's fingers, then; warm as a wolf pelt on nights the wine froze in the glasses, and she realised that it was Jaime's skin covering her as he held her to his chest like a little girl; the heat of him melting through her shift and into her body.

'It's…it's warm,' she shivered; her lips trembling so violently that she could barely get the words out, and he didn't reply at all, but sat frozen like a statue against her, as though he had acted impulsively and now regretted it; and she was falling, falling back into the past to the day of the riots when she had run and run and hidden and been trapped, and he had saved her and she had saved him, and she had refused to be carried like a child, even though her legs were barely strong enough to support her weight, and Jaime had dumped her into the dust, chivalrous as ever, and called her a stubborn little idiot. But when she had tried to stand on her own, her treacherous knees had given way beneath her again and again until she was half-crying from her own weakness; from this place; from this time; from what had almost happened to her; from the thrill and the horror of taking life; until Jaime had snorted in derision, picked her up again, and had made sure to remind her of her own stupidity for every step he took towards the Red Keep; his grip on her strong, but gentle; like a link being forged in a chain. She had leaned against him and had let him speak his piece, too tired and too weak to fight back, until his warmth had seemed to envelop her like a blanket on a cold night, and the sound of his voice had been drowned out by the fury of his heartbeat; which had thundered ferociously in his chest like a battle cry, but had somehow made her feel calm.

For one moment, she was there again, safe, and a child; wanting to bury herself in his skin and sleep there. Then the adult world and adult things returned to crush her, as they always did. Her broken body returned; her broken soul, if she still had one; the scars on her ankles and wrists, from the chains, and from the memories; two memories at the same time.

The day that she had left King's Landing.

_In the boat, Jaime's mouth on hers. _

The knowledge, as they dragged her out into the forecourt, that he was there, that he would save her.

_In the boat, her hands tangling in Jaime's hair as he softly kissed her neck. _

The realisation that he wasn't stopping the men who were hurting her, that he wasn't coming to help her, that she wanted him to help her, that she needed him to, that he wasn't coming _why isn't he coming, why is he leaving me, why is he letting me go_

_The two minutes, the lifetime, in which she had been kissed softly, touched softly, caressed softly; Jaime's fingers light as feathers as they stroked her skin and covered her hands with his. _

_The two minutes, the lifetime, in which she had been loved._

'I..._hate_ you,' she sobbed into Jaime's chest; a sob that she had meant to be a growl, and she flinched automatically as she waited for him to pull away, and strike her for her impudence, and take what was his by every law of Westeros.

But his fingers stroked her back as though she were made of porcelain, until the tautness in her muscles unknotted itself and faded out of her, and she felt Jaime's lips brush the top of her head and whisper, 'go to sleep.'

'I don't sleep.'

'Try.'

She didn't sleep.

She told him.

She told him everything, the words spilling out of her like blood; her husband, her son, her husband standing over her son, and the horror, the horror, the pain, the _fear_. Half of her expected him to mock her; the other half to beat her; no half at all for him to listen in silence; his one hand comfortingly stroking her hair, the other her back, and she let him, she allowed him to, she wanted him to, because if she didn't have someone holding her up in that moment, she would fall into madness and never return, and she needed her sanity, her mind, her strength, for her son, her tomorrow, her freedom.

'Ramsay is dead,' Jaime whispered; his lips brushing her ear; 'he can only hurt you now if you allow him to.'

Arya nodded silently against him, though she wanted to tell him that he was wrong; that sorrow followed you everywhere, regardless of where you hid away. But he was so warm, warm and safe, and she hadn't felt warm or safe in years. She felt him shift slightly on the bed so that his back touched the wall. His arms around her did not move. She could feel the sound of the sea outside, and within herself, a heat, a constancy, that she had not felt for a very long time. Sleep began to claim her again as she tried to think about it, and the words she heard as thought faded from her mind might have been dream, or reality.

'I will miss you...'


End file.
